Request: Ambinder

A reader wants to know: "I know you read Ambinder's blog. Do you think it's balanced? If not, which way does it incline?" I think it's very balanced. I have no idea what Marc thinks and, indeed, I sometimes think Marc is so committed to reporting and balance that he doesn't know what he thinks. A lot of his posts are reporting -- him telling us what people are telling him, so any given post like that will reflect a bias toward whoever he was talking to, but look at the thing as a whole and it's extremely fair.

But over the past 40 years the tendency has been for Republicans to win and Democrats to lose and for the Democrats who do win to be moderate Southerners. Consequently, I think real horse-race specialists are instinctively skeptical of the idea that liberalism can or will prevail. That's a bummer for liberals to read, but it will change if 2006 is followed up by another big year in 2008.

Comments

If 2008 is a big year for liberals (heaven forfend) it will be the first. The lesson from 2006 was to run to the center: McGaskill, Casey, Tester, Shuler, and so on.

Posted by Cal | June 13, 2008 3:39 PM

Tim Russert dead at 58, heart attack. Sad for his family and friends. However, accuracy and fairplay in media will receive a bump upward of a couple points for it. Let's hope MTP doesn't hire Rush or Hannity to fill his slot.

Posted by steve duncan | June 13, 2008 3:40 PM

Posted on earlier thread but breaking news is Tim Russert dead of Heart Attack.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/nbcs-tim-russert-dead-heart/story.aspx?guid=%7B9FFF60AE%2D0329%2D48A3%2D8B99%2D8C8CF556EEA2%7D&dateid=39612.6492325926-931509623#comments

Posted by drjimcooper | June 13, 2008 3:40 PM

Agreed. The comments on his blog accusing him of every kind of bias are insane.

In particular, it mystifies me that people get on his case for reprinting press releases or posting MP3s of conference calls -- it's one thing when reporters rewrite press releases and call it journalism, but using a blog to pass along raw material identified as such is entirely reasonable.

Posted by alkali | June 13, 2008 3:41 PM

Russert died.

Posted by dry_fish | June 13, 2008 3:43 PM

Agreed. The comments on the Ambinder blog accusing him of every kind of bias are insane.

In particular, it mystifies me that people get on his case for reprinting press releases or posting MP3s of conference calls. It's one thing when reporters rewrite press releases and call it journalism, but using a blog to pass along raw material identified as such is entirely reasonable.

Posted by alkali | June 13, 2008 3:45 PM

Cal, how are any of the candidates you named going to do anything other than support liberal policies? The brilliance of Casey is that he is a liberal candidate whose conservative stance on abortion is opposed by all but a small group on the right, and thus will have no legislative influence whatsoever.

I wouldn't so much say it's good to run to the left as it is to demoralize the right. Then you can run whomever you want against them.

Posted by Tyro | June 13, 2008 3:46 PM

Bad taste, Steve.

Posted by Will | June 13, 2008 3:48 PM

I think Ambinder's balanced but totally useless. Printing press releases isn't reporting.

Posted by Katherine | June 13, 2008 3:59 PM

Cal, that's so beyond absurd. McCaskill is a moderate replacing a conservative Republican in a center-right state. Tester is a populist replacing a conservative Republican in a center-right state. Casey is center-left (on all but one big issue) replacing the rightest of right Republicans in a centrist state. Shuler ran as an antiwar populist and defeated a conservative Republican in a conservative district. No, they don't check every single liberal box, and Casey was a very disappointing choice for most liberals, but none of them ran away from any authentically liberal opinions they held.

Also victorious: some seriously liberal Representatives throughout New England. Also victorious: liberal Sherrod Brown in centrist Ohio. Also victorious: Jim Webb running as an antiwar populist (regardless of his overall persona, those were the central themes of his 2006 campaign) in centrist Virginia. Also victorious: liberal Sheldon Whitehouse over a moderate Republican in liberal Rhode Island. And that's to say nothing of liberal Democrats holding seats over "moderate" Republicans in Maryland, Minnesota, and New Jersey.

I know it hurts when you see people you don't like winning in the party you think you own, but it doesn't make it any less real to pretend it's not happening. Moderates won in right-leaning districts and liberals won in left-leaning districts. That's not a victory for centrism; it's a victory for people who were to the left of the incumbents at all points on the spectrum. So unless you want to argue that those liberal districts aren't American enough for you or something, you're spouting unadulterated nonsense.

Posted by jhupp | June 13, 2008 4:02 PM

Bad taste, Steve.

Posted by Will
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Unfortunately in this day and age Will politics is war. It doesn't need to be that way but Republicans have turned it into the daily battlefield it is. Their side wins and they get SCOTUS. They get people killed in preemptive wars. They allow poisoning of the enviroment. They permit renditions of the innocent to black holes in Syria. Russert carried their water for them. He was one of their foot soldiers. He was a pernicious enabler of the agenda of The Right. As in any war the forces of good must hope the hostilities end soon and peacefully. Until that happens there is no shame in feeling something positive at the passing of one of their enemies.

Posted by steve duncan | June 13, 2008 4:05 PM

Katherine, in Ambinder's defense, such a style does tell us what insiders are thinking, or at least want to leak.

Ambinder's best moment was when he provided just such an insight: telling us that reporters really disliked Edwards. Why? He never quite explained, but for those of us who aren't reporters ourselves and don't read The Hill, regularly, it's useful to at least hear what "the party line" is. It requires someone as easily led and as unquestioning as Ambinder is to pull off, though.

Posted by Tyro | June 13, 2008 4:07 PM

"I think real horse-race specialists are instinctively skeptical of the idea that liberalism can or will prevail."

Interesting that you apparently think someone can be biased and yet still be balanced. At best you can defend him by saying that he's too intellectually lazy to look to the evidence and instead relies on the same institutional prejudices that stain his profession. And if the things that Obama is running on--universal healthcare, leaving Iraq, increasing transparency in government, change from the shitty Bush era, etc.--that are supported by over two thirds of the country are liberal, then two thirds of the country is liberal. Which is fine by me, but not exactly evidence that liberalism can't win.

Posted by Client #11 | June 13, 2008 4:10 PM

OK, here's a related question for MattY: why didn't Ambinder push what should be a big story? I'm pretty sure I know why, but it'd be great if MattY could answer it in his own way.

Posted by TLB | June 13, 2008 4:27 PM

I don't think Ambinder is a John McCain flack, and he does write a fair amount of stuff that kinda marvels at Obama's achievement. But there was a period between Super Tuesday and NC/IN Tuesday where I thought his coverage of Obama took a pretty consistently unfavorable tone, and I don't think that tone made any appearances when McCain was caught lying about stuff or otherwise screwing up.

Also, I'm not sure I agree with people who say that as long as he's just relaying video or talking points from "Republican oppo circles", it doesn't matter how many of them he circulates relative to those from Dem oppo circles.

But I really have no idea whom he plans to vote for and I have hair-trigger bias radar so I guess "very balanced" is a fair description.

Posted by lowellfield | June 13, 2008 4:33 PM

Ambinder is a total hack and completely worthless as a journalist.

More worthless are Yglesias or Sullivan's opinion of Ambinder, who is their friend and colleague, making them completely biased.

Ambinder's bias against Obama is palpable and endlessly snarky. He does this under the guise of being an "objective reporter."

Ambinder's entire career is a charade.

The Atlantic could and should replace Ambinder with an intern, who could post Clinton and McCain propaganda just as easily as Ambinder.

Fire. Ambinder. Now.

Posted by Bubblegoose | June 13, 2008 4:41 PM

My only real issue with Ambinder isn't the scrutiny and attention he pays to Obama...it's that he doesn't apply the same level of attention to McCain.

Example: countless posts on Jim Johnson, but none on the VP vetter for McCain.

Posted by Dan | June 13, 2008 4:57 PM

I was in Matt's class at Harvard and wrote for the Crimson, so Ambinder was my editor and I knew him quite well. I don't know what his political views are now, but on election night 2000, watching the returns come in, he was extremely excited about Gore's (apparent) victory. He also did everything he possibly could to hide his political preferences, because he was fanatical, even then, about being an objective journalist.

You can criticize Ambinder for bad analysis (and I often do think that his analysis is wrong), or for a misguided evenhandedness in normative reporting (and I do subscribe to Jonathan Alter's thesis about this, and think that maybe Ambinder is susceptible to it), but there's no doubt that he's an excellent reporter who has developed a lot of good sources and gets stories that usually turn out to be correct. It's pretty unfair, though, to suggest that he's some kind of closet partisan.

Posted by Quit picking on Ambinder | June 13, 2008 5:13 PM

Ambinder apparently thinks Russert was a marvelous journalist with a "vital voice". That tells you pretty much all you need to know about Ambinder's low standards and lack of perspective. Russert probably was a great guy to know, probably was a fantastic father and husband, but he was an awful journalist and a baleful influence on American journalism. As Ambinder notes, Russert was "responsible for so many innovations in modern political journalism", but he fails to note all the innovations were bad.

Posted by vanya | June 13, 2008 5:29 PM

Ambinder doesn't strike me as particularly malicious, but he definitely gets kicks from rocking Obama's boat whenever he can.

I think it's mostly because Ambinder thinks of himself as an "insider", even while being insecure about his abilities. Basically, Mark's entire schtick is reprinting the contents of his inbox as he saw fit. He's a soundingboard for anyone wanting to push a political agenda. He probably thinks of himself as a gatekeeper, but really he's another political tool for the campaigns.

His thing with Obama seems to be that Obama's campaign is predicated on changing the inside baseball political culture that Ambinder relies on to make his living. You saw it play out with the Obama/Clinton matchup, and you're seeing it again with the current Obama/McCain matchup. It probably helps that controversy brings in the web hits, but I get the feeling that he really wants to see if he can pierce the Obama campaign, just because.

Posted by dannity | June 13, 2008 5:32 PM

I think his blog sucks. I go there because I get the same inside-the-Beltway right-leaning conventional wisdom horseshit that I get from Halperin, but he doesn't seem like as much if a scumbag as Halperin.

Hope that helps.

Posted by TomT | June 13, 2008 5:40 PM

Is it really so "balanced" to just print what other people say?

"Leading figures in the administration today said that the sky was purple. Others claims they're wrong."

Really, excellent journalism there... But, yes - balanced.

Posted by Trigger | June 13, 2008 6:11 PM

"He also did everything he possibly could to hide his political preferences, because he was fanatical, even then, about being an objective journalist."

Ambinder's gravest sin is buying, and perpetuating, the ridiculous notion that there is such a thing as objectivity in journalism. It would better service his readers to report more honestly from his own perspective, instead of going out of his way to suppress useful analysis and context in an effort to be what he perceives as even-handed.

Posted by qjkx | June 13, 2008 6:18 PM

You know what my favorite part of these kinds of discussion is? The people who show up to say "He did give me a blowjob once at the Hasty Pudding when we were at Harvard together. He was brilliant then (always dominated the discussion in our Social Studies sections) and he's brilliant now."

Posted by DougJ | June 13, 2008 6:26 PM

Heh...DougJ, I agree it's a stupid discussion, but the explicit question posed was "what are Ambinder's political leanings?" And the answer is that just before blowing me at the Hasty Pudding, Ambinder did mention that he wanted Al Gore to win the election. His reporting may be misguided, or informed by an inside-baseball bias, but so far as I know, it's not informed by a personal preference for the GOP.

Posted by Quit picking on Ambinder | June 13, 2008 7:03 PM

When a journalist repeatedly prints a political campaign's press releases, he ceases to be a journalist at all and becomes a propaganda agent.

Continuing to disseminate propaganda under the banner of objective journalism is unethical and frankly immoral. It is not substantially different than what Fox News does - only different in scope and medium and political POV.

Make no mistake about it - the fact that Marc Ambinder's blog has become nothing but an excuse for posting whatever spin Hillary or McCain are throwing to him - which he naively laps up like an anxious puppydog - should be an embarrassment to The Atlantic and it's staff.

Just another example of Ivy League nepotism sullying another formerly fine institution trying to stay at the forefront of the new technologies by putting callow careerists in positions of power.

The blog is a tremendous new frontier in public life, as The Atlantic's own Andrew Sullivan has shown. But Sullivan never claims to be a traditional journalist. He's an opinion-ist. He doesn't need an editor.

But an objective journalist does - and yet The Atlantic has let Ambinder pose as objective while not practicing real journalism at all, but rather gossip and propaganda. No fact-checking necessary. It's all just "Washington insider talk."

The sad irony is that on the day a fine journalist like Russert passes away, people come in here and pretend that a hack like Ambinder is doing it the right way. We deserve better than that.

Posted by Eric Blair | June 13, 2008 7:12 PM

DougJ was it MY, Ambinder, Obama or some Harvard legacy who gave you the bj

Posted by curious | June 13, 2008 7:15 PM

I'll never forget the time Binder (as we called him) and I nearly came to blows over the new Spoon album at the Border Cafe. Must have been those potent Border margaritas. Who would have guessed that just a few years later I'd be a partner at McKinsey and he'd be his generation's most respected political writer.

Posted by DougJ | June 13, 2008 7:32 PM

I think what's a little sad is that people are so used to reading opinions without reporting on blogs, so the opposite really throws them. Ambinder's blog is trying to be reporting with some amount of commentary, but not a totally partisan slant. Kind of like the "News Analysis" columns in the NY Times. But people are so unused to seeing this on a blog that they assume every post, even the fairly neutral ones, has a hidden agenda.

This seems to be how he managed to get bashed as both a Clintonite closet Obama-hater and a Obama-stooge closet Clinton-hater. I'm sure he'd get bashed as a liberal-stooge closet McCain-hater too, but there are fewer conservatives reading the Atlantic so that constituency is less well represented.

Of course, you also have to take into account that ultra-partisan people with nothing better to do are over represented among blog commentors. Not excluding myself.

Posted by Ben | June 13, 2008 7:56 PM

I think what's a little sad is that people are so used to reading opinions without reporting on blogs, so the opposite really throws them.

It is sad, especially for those of who roomed with Binder at Currier and know what an objective fellow he is.

Posted by DougJ | June 13, 2008 8:20 PM

Cal, how are any of the candidates you named going to do anything other than support liberal policies?

Every single one of the candidates mentioned voted against the amnesty bill, to name just one example. Tester and Shuler are strongly pro-gun rights, to name another. I'm sure there are many more. There's an article at booman tribune about this, in fact.

The country assuredly did not move to the left in 2006, and it probably isn't today.

Posted by Cal | June 13, 2008 8:25 PM

I think Matt's on to something about Ambinder. But he actually knows him. From just reading his blog, Ambinder gives the impression of being a slave to the conventional wisdom and a complete moron. I actually feel dumber after reading him. Is he playing dumb, in the manner of Columbo?

Also, he posted a goddam Harry Potter spoiler!

Posted by Chris | June 13, 2008 9:21 PM

liberalism already lost when the obama campaign strong-armed its way to the "presumptive" democratic nomination and hillary, the only liberal, was knocked out in favour of obama's politically correct impersonation of george bush.

Posted by londonamerican | June 13, 2008 10:25 PM

I don't think Marc is biased and I think his reporting is generally very good. I will say that I think lots of the points he makes are really stupid: when Obama joked about visiting 57 states he made the point that Obama was just exhausted but if it was McCain it would be because he was old and befuddled. When if it was either it would be a joke. He tried to contrast Obama not making any trips abroad during the campaign with McCain doing so less than a week after Obama won. There are plenty of other dumb points.

He also seems to treat dumb things said by others like they aren't dumb. I would sum it up by saying I think he is a good reporter but a terrible pundit, I read his blog and enjoy it, but when he uses it for a venue for his ideas and opinions (which isn't that often) the results are cringe inducing. I don't think he is necessarily dense, I think he is just trying to be fair to both sides one of which, the mainstream right, is actually stupid almost all the time. A person who is really even handed over whether the earth is 6000 years old (8000?) will come off as a complete moron.

But yeah I don't think things that are provably wrong or, if given any thought, transparently immoral deserve being taken seriously in a point-counter-point situation.

Posted by Michael Foody | June 13, 2008 10:53 PM

It is truly sad to see what this once-proud publication has turned into. Allowing this kind of guttertalk to fester underneath the Atlantic's masthead is negligent at best, and slanderous at worst.

As editor of the Crimson, Ambinder would have been fellated by his staff writers. Not the other way around.

Posted by Chad Barrington Smythe | June 13, 2008 11:08 PM

Thanks for answering my request, Matt.

But over the past 40 years the tendency has been for Republicans to win and Democrats to lose and for the Democrats who do win to be moderate Southerners. Consequently, I think real horse-race specialists are instinctively skeptical of the idea that liberalism can or will prevail.

I think that's probably accurate. It's an interesting distinction: bias against liberals vs. skepticism of liberals based on historical performance. I tend to think the effect is the same (as far as the reader can tell), but it certainly complicates questions of intent. That may also explain why Ambinder and his commenters have such trouble getting used to each other.

Posted by southpaw | June 13, 2008 11:14 PM

Every single one of the candidates mentioned voted against the amnesty bill, to name just one example. Tester and Shuler are strongly pro-gun rights, to name another. I'm sure there are many more. There's an article at booman tribune about this, in fact.

The country assuredly did not move to the left in 2006, and it probably isn't today.

It's one thing to note that these candidates took centrist and/or conservative stands on certain issues. It's something else to say they got elected by moving to the right. They certainly ran more progressive platforms than Senate candidates did in 2004.

By the way, Cal, if you hate the left so much, why do you keep hanging out on liberal sites like this one? Somehow, I think readers of this site are not the ones you're going to convince to vote for McCain.

Posted by Peter H | June 14, 2008 12:42 AM

I don't know where Doug went to school, but Matt's Harvard shtick does get old for us guys who didn't get in. I feel left out when these guys rub it in. FWIW, Gloria Borger was an editor of mine when I was a grunt on the Colgate paper, and I had no more use for her then than I do now.

Posted by Marlowe | June 14, 2008 12:59 AM

I don't know where Doug went to school, but Matt's Harvard shtick does get old for us guys who didn't get in. I feel left out when these guys rub it in. FWIW, Gloria Borger was an editor of mine when I was a grunt on the Colgate paper, and I had no more use for her then than I do now.

Posted by Marlowe | June 14, 2008 1:00 AM

@Michael Foody: That would be my assessment, too. The pure information, on the whole, I find useful, and I've never felt he favored any candidate over another. (I certainly don't think his posting of press releases is partisan -- as far as I can tell, he's just publicizing material from the campaigns for the readership's review and to make it part of the public record.)

But a lot of times when Ambinder appears to be offering commentary, he does it in this very obtuse way and I have no idea what point he's making -- and I have a pretty strong command of the English language, so I don't think it's my fault. I get the sense that he's being insidery or thinks he's being cleverly subtle, but I just come away thinking (1) he's kind of a dumbass and (2) he's being a poor journalist, because the aim is to clear things up for readers, not leave them confused.

I also have a major gripe about his corrections policy. In general, I don't feel like he quite gets the medium he's working in; but then, I don't feel like Matthew does, either. I mean, of the three Atlantic blogs I look at, I feel by far the greatest sense of community over at Sullivan's -- which is interesting to me, because his is the one without comments.

Posted by moff | June 14, 2008 2:11 AM

I certainly don't think his posting of press releases is partisan -- as far as I can tell, he's just publicizing material from the campaigns for the readership's review and to make it part of the public record.

It makes one liable for manipulation by whatever faction is willing to send you the most number and most ridiculous press releases.

That's why Ambinder is a good source to let you know how the beltway journalists are being spun and by whom. The problem (for him) is that serving this role requires that he be completely passive and unaware of the way in which he is being used.

Posted by Tyro | June 14, 2008 5:23 AM

@Tyro: What makes you sure he's posting every single press release he receives? And I don't understand why it "requires" that he be passive and unaware.

Posted by moff | June 14, 2008 9:43 AM

Take a look at his bookcase. He has the covers of two McCain biographies on display for him to admire and then he has a card mocking Obama on display. Where do you think his proclivities lie?

http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/7400/ambernc0.png

If he was serious about balance, why would he want to admire McCain's face and biography all day and then laugh at Obama's face all day?

Ambinder is a BIG FAT (literally) joke. His appeal for context for McCain was similarly not rivaled for his appeal for context for Obama and "bittergate". That's all you need to know.

He's never written a decent thing about Obama, if you watch the two videos on Sullivan's site, he spends both criticizing Obama the whole time and defending both Clinton and McCain. Some would call that "balance", but it is an odd sort of balance where he is constantly criticizing Obama and constantly defending McCain.

Posted by debrazza | June 14, 2008 9:54 AM

Debrazza, that's not a picture of Ambinder.

I think all that you need to know about Ambinder's peculiar brand of "balanced" journalism can be summed up in his defense of Mitt Romney's painfully humorous back and forth flip-flopping on his abortion position.

This came right after Mitt, who ran as a pro-choice candidate in Massachusetts before morphing into a hardline pro-life Presidential candidate, commented the he would like to leave it up to individual states to decide.

Marc wrote:

Mitt Romney is simply struggling to explain the Republican Party’s conventional pro-life position. Which is: overturn Roe v. Wade. And then, slowly build up public support for a constitutional amendment banning abortions. ETA: 30 years or more.

This is not a flip-flop.

Again, that was Marc writing that, not him quoting anyone. I don't know if he came up with that on his own, or if he just dutifully reprinted the email from Romney's communications director, but there's no excuse for Marc to try to pass that mish-mash off to his readers. None. I guess it's balanced if you can get everybody on all sides of the ideological spectrum to groan in unison, but it's definitely not journalism.

I might call Marc a lot of different things, but a journalist isn't one. A journalist actually makes an intellectually honest attempt to uncover answers to the things that he and his readers might wonder about. Not just repeat talking points from whomever is currently blowing up his inbox the hardest or offering him the juiciest carrot. Ambinder is alternately a stenographer, a spinmiester, and a gossip hound as the mood strikes him.

That might sound a bit hard on Marc, but the question was asked.

Posted by dannity | June 14, 2008 11:42 AM

The "This is not a flip-flop" should be part of Marc's quote.

Posted by dannity | June 14, 2008 11:51 AM

dannity:

That is a picture Andrew Sullivan in Ambinder's office.

Watch the video yourself.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/06/were-back.html

Posted by debrazza | June 14, 2008 1:29 PM

"I will say that I think lots of the points he makes are really stupid: when Obama joked about visiting 57 states he made the point that Obama was just exhausted but if it was McCain it would be because he was old and befuddled."

-Michael Foody

Not only was this stupid and petty, it was wrong. Obama never said anything about states, he said 57 contests--and he didn't make it up or fall victim to fatigue, he was right! There were 50 contests in the 50 states, plus DC, Puerto Rico, Americans Abroad, American Samoa, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and the Texas Caucuses. That's 57 contests. So not only does Ambinder waste time on the trivial, he doesn't take the time to get the trivia right. I know this off the top of my head, and I may be a political junky, but I'm not paid for my knowledge and I'm certainly not somebody who makes a living reporting for one of the most prestigious periodicals in the country. That his reporting is of such low quality and that his factual knowledge is below the median liberal blog commentator's is simply unforgivable.

Note the increadibly weak defenses of Ambinder; people who read his blog are apparently unable to comprehend that blogs can report (no TPM fans here!), and are so discombobulated by the occurance that they lash out in inchoate rage. Note also the specific criticisms of Ambinder's work in opposition to the imprecise stereotypes that defend one of the most bland purveyors of conventional wisdom in the press. The contrast says it all.

I would also like to echo what qjkx says: reporters aren't "objective" they merely perpetuate the mores and rituals of their predecessors and collegues. Again, can anyone validate the claim that a reporter can be both biased and balanced?

Posted by Client #11 | June 14, 2008 9:25 PM

Clearly Ambinder's weak performance and journalistic lapses have become an issue at The Atlantic, otherwise why would Yglesias be interested in this? Have there been that many complaints?

Nice Friday afternoon dump there, Matt.

These bloggers are no different than politicians. Watch the blog mafia try to get ahead of their crony's lapses while pretending to "not know what Marc thinks."

Posted by Eric Blair | June 14, 2008 11:43 PM