PUBLIC MARKS from jasontromm with tags left & conservative

When Judge Anna Diggs Taylor was given the job of deciding whether the Bush administration’s wiretapping program was unconstitutional, she certainly understood that she would be ruling on one of the most politically charged cases in recent history. So it would have been prudent for her to disclose any activity that might conceivably raise questions about her ability to be impartial. Regrettably, it was left to a conservative group, Judicial Watch, to point out her role as a trustee to a foundation that had given grants to a branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, a plaintiff in the case.

But reporters still ignore free market advocates who predicted it. Media coverage of problems facing the new Medicare prescription drug plan focused on elderly patients left in the lurch by bureaucracy, producing what CBS’s Bill Plante called a “political headache” for the Bush administration. But in the Jan. 16 reports on the “Evening News” and “World News Tonight,” both networks ignored conservative critics who had argued the plan was doomed to fail because it was a typical big government solution that ignored the free market.