Every Friday, four local journalists discuss current events (and, often, their own columns) on the Weekday program on our local PBS affiliate, KUOW.  Usually, the host is KUOW's Steve Scher, and the three journalists are Knute Berger, who edited an alternative paper, the Seattle Weekly, for many years (and now has what appear to be a couple of part-time jobs), Susan Paynter of the Seattle PI, and Danny Westneat of the Seattle Times.

From time to time, I listen to the program, though I usually do so, as I mentioned here, as a pathologist.  I am interested in why our "mainstream" news organizations are failing, why they are losing readers, watchers, and listeners, why "mainstream" journalists are held in such disdain by the public.  And listening to Weekday often gives me some clues on those questions.

If I had just two adjectives to describe the typical Gang of Four show, I would choose partisan and frivolous.  Not partisan in the sense of supporting the Democratic party — though they do — but partisan in the sense that they treat moderates and conservatives very differently than they treat leftists.  Today's show provided examples for each adjective.

After discussing the surprise resignation of Mike Hargrove, the Mariners manager, they moved to a discussion of a political topic, and those who are familiar with the show will not be surprised by their choice.  Not the doctors' plot in Britain, the most dramatic story of the week, not the good news on the economy, the most important story of the week, but Bush's partial commutation of Lewis Libby's sentence.  None of the four seemed willing to consider the idea that Libby might be innocent, or even that his sentence might be unfair — though it is at far end of the Justice Department guidelines.  And all of the four had the leftist talking points on the subject down pat.

None of the four seem to understand why President Bush had chosen a partial commutation, though the explanation for that is simple enough.  Giving Libby a partial commutation allows him to stay out of jail while he appeals the verdict, while he seeks justice in a higher court.  That's unfair only if you know for certain that Libby is guilty.

As he often does, Knute Berger contributed some nasty speculation on how evil the Bush administration is, without, as usual, providing a single bit of evidence for his speculation.  The other three, as usual, just chuckled at Berger's nasty irresponsibility.  (They may have trouble understanding why I object to this, so let me give them a personal example.  Though I often disagree with the Gang of Four, it would be wrong for me to speculate, without evidence, on crimes they may have committed.)

From that partisan topic, the Gang of Four moved to a frivolous topic, a story about coyotes in Seattle, which is not news because it is not new.  Even there, they missed something interesting.   Though pets, especially cats, are often lost to city coyotes, they can also be dangerous to people.  Some years ago, a coyote killed a toddler in Los Angeles, a story so dramatic that I would think that experienced journalists would have heard of it.  (Of course, as you may know, Seattle has many more pets than children, so the four may just have been catering to a large segment of their audience.)

When I listen to the show, I often end up grading the gang for partisanship.  I have tried different grading schemes, but have finally settled on this one:  If the program is entirely partisan (on the left) they get a zero.  The grade rises as they include more ideas from moderates and conservatives.  The ideal score would be a .5, showing an even balance.  Today the score was a typical .05.  Why .05, rather than 0?  Because they did laugh at the Clintons' criticism of the Libby commutation.  Or at least three of the four did; Berger did not seem to join the other three in finding that amusing.

You may wonder whether any listeners made moderate or conservative points.  In fact, none did, at least none whose calls were taken, or whose emails were read.  And, from listening to the program for some time, I think I can say that Steve Scher does little to encourage comments from the center, or the right.  (I do, by the way, include what the listeners say in the program's grade.)

There are, I think, lessons in what I heard on the program this morning, lessons that help explain the decline in trust for "mainstream" journalists, lessons that help explain why their audiences are shrinking.  I don't plan to make those lessons explicit, but I do plan to listen to the program again from time to time, and give you more reports like this one.  And I think that, over time, you may come to the same conclusions that I have about our "mainstream" journalists — if you have not done so already.

Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.

Correction:  What I originally wrote is that the Libby sentence was outside the Justice Department guidelines.  That went too far, and I have corrected it above.  And I should have added that the sentence went far beyond what the probation office recommended.  In fact, defense attorney (and leftist) Jeralyn Merritt thought, after seeing that recommendation, that an ordinary defendant in the same situation as Libby would get no jail time at all.

I'm wondering if Judge Walton will have the wherewithal to sentence Libby to probation given the high profile nature of the case.  But, in an ordinary case, given a pre-sentence report as favorably described as this one, I think that would be the outcome.

In other words, Merritt believes that the sentence was, at least in part — political.