Today In "Both Sides Don't": James Fallows

Noted reasonable, even-tempered dude, James Fallows, breaks out the Driftglass Hammer:

How the Press Can Deal With the Benghazi Committee
When a congressional investigation turns into a partisan operation, the media need to treat it as such.

...The point is: Only now, a year after Eric Cantor was driven out of his House seat by a challenger not closer to the middle but further to the right; a month after John Boehner decided to leave one of the theoretically most-powerful jobs in American governance; when possible savior-successor Paul Ryan is being attacked as too liberal; and during a GOP presidential primary campaign whose “center” is further to the right than any in memory—only in these circumstances have reporters begun to talk directly about the Republican party’s move toward the fringe. We’d all still really prefer to warn against “extremists on both sides.” If you listen you’ll still hear that on talk shows.

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We in the press are so much more comfortable talking about “congressional dysfunction” than “the GOP’s abandonment of governance.” It becomes easier only when another Republican says so. Update: or when a conservative-friendly writer like David Brooks says so...

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It has taken mainstream journalism too long a time to catch up with the reality of the “Benghazi Committee,” run by Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina. (He is from our beloved Greenville, in fact.) The reality is that the Republican staff and majority of the committee have made it function as an oppo-research arm of the Republican National Committee, far more interested in whatever it might dig up about or against Hillary Clinton than any remaining mysteries on the four Americans killed in Benghazi.

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The latest Times article makes clear in retrospect what I thought was evident all along: that the steady stream of leaks was coming either from Republican staffers or Republican committee members. But while these stories were dribbling out, most notably with the completely false report that Hillary Clinton was the object of a criminal investigation, a claim the Times trumpeted on its front page, reporters added no shading to suggest that these allegations were coming essentially from a partisan oppo-research group. To do so would have been to “take sides.” Yet as Kevin McCarthy inconveniently blurted out, through their commitment to “neutrality,” reporters had been taking sides all along.
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Keep pounding, kids.

Keep pounding.