[Commentary] Just two nights ago on his show, Fox News Channel's Brit Hume led panelists Fred Barnes, Morton Kondracke, and Charles Krauthammer in a discussion of the purported liberal coverage of the presidential campaign. A greater collection of like minds may never have been assembled. Hume recently told the Los Angeles Times that he's "a journalist first and a conservative second or third." Barnes is executive editor of the Weekly Standard and author of the 2006 book Rebel-in-Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush. Krauthammer is a leading conservative columnist and thinker. Kondracke's distinguishing feature is that he has no distinguishing feature—unless being a chameleon is distinguishing. And so, without any sense of irony, the conservative quartet batted around the subject of liberal media bias. Nobody had a new idea to share, and because there weren't any liberals on tap, no real critical view of the premise was aired. It was as predictable as a theological discussion among a foursome of atheists. If the folks at Fox News Channel really think that the mainstream media is doing such an awful job of reporting the 2008 campaign, they should direct their complaints to their boss, Rupert Murdoch, who owns the second-biggest newspaper in the country, the Wall Street Journal. The best press criticism isn't a column or a moan of disgust into a TV camera. It's writing a better story.
