Berger Affair: Textbook Example of Bias

As I wrote Tuesday, the Seattle Times is trying the best it can to both minimize the significance of Sandy Berger's classified document theft, as well as attempt to shift the blame to the Bush administration. I challenge anyone who doubts that liberal bias exists at the Seattle Times to simply look at the coverage of this incident over the last three days.

Yesterday's story on page A4, "Berger Quits Kerry Role as Document Investigation Generates Political Fallout", is really just a repeat of Tuesday's story. We get more apologies and explanations as to why this was an "innocent" mistake. The second paragraph starts, "Berger expressed regret over the incident, which he called an 'honest mistake'." And there are a number of quotes from prominent individuals including Bill Clinton claiming Berger is innocent. Details of the crime itself are glossed over. I'll get back to that in a minute.

While Tuesday's story only hinted at a political motivation for making this issue public, yesterday's story was more overt. "'So is this about sandy Berger or is this about politics?' asked Sen. Barbara Mikuslki, D-Md."

Today, however, the Seattle Times let the Bush Administration have it with both barrels. On page A5, we get the story, "White House Criticized Over Berger Leak". This is truly terrible journalism, even for the Seattle Times. The story is simply accusations from the Kerry team that Bush was involved in leaking the story. There is absolutely no evidence to back this up. I'm sure the Times would defend itself by saying, "Hey, we're just reporting what Kerry's team is telling us", but this is NO EXCUSE for printing absolutely factless accusations. The Times should NEVER have printed this piece and I am forwarding this letter to the Times.

What the Times SHOULD have printed, however, is some more background on the crime itself. The New York Post reports:
After Berger's previous visit, in September, Archives officials believed documents were missing. This time, they specially coded the papers to more easily tell whether some disappeared, said government officials and legal sources familiar with the case. . . . The government source said the Archives employees were deferential toward Berger, given his prominence, but were worried when he returned to view more documents on Oct. 2. They devised a coding system and marked the documents they knew Berger was interested in canvassing, and watched him carefully. They knew he was interested in all the versions of the millennium review, some of which bore handwritten notes from Clinton-era officials who had reviewed them. At one point an Archives employee even handed Berger a coded draft and asked whether he was sure he had seen it. At the end of the day, Archives employees determined that that draft and all four or five other versions of the millennium memo had disappeared from the files, this source said.

None of this information appears in any of the Seattle Times stories. The fact that Archive staff had suspected him of taking documents in the past is pretty damn relevant to the story, it seems to me. Instead of all those quotes from folks telling us what a wonderful guy Sandy Berger is, perhaps the Times could have included these key details.

I said it Tuesday and I'll say it again, had this happened to a Bush staffer, you can bet your bottom dollar the Times would have presented this story COMPLETELY differently. In fact, I have NO DOUBT there would be Democratic lawmakers (and perhaps the Seattle Times) calling on Bush to resign. I can just hear the mock outrage. Can't you?