Pundit pours facts on Kerry's whine

Senator John Kerry's never seemed like a happy guy - nuanced certainly, service in Vietnam for sure - but never happy.

What best characterizes Kerry is his whines. Recently, he's been whining that the vast right-wing media drowned out his presidential campaign message; thereby insuring President Bush's victory. It may comfort Kerry to believe that.

Someone who doesn't buy Kerry's '05 vintage whine is Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby. His column today begins with a taste of Kerry's whine, then quickly gets to facts. Here's a sample.

But there is a difference. Nixon really did a face an overwhelmingly hostile press corps. Kerry, Gore, and Clinton, by contrast, benefit from a news media that is overwhelmingly liberal, as countless surveys have shown. To cite just one: When a New York Times reporter polled journalists covering the 2004 Democratic National Convention, those from around the country favored Kerry over Bush by a ratio of 3 to 1. Among the Washington press corps, the results were even more lopsided -- 12 to 1 pro-Kerry.

What Kerry and the others object to is not that there are only conservative voices in media circles these days but that there are any such voices. The right-of-center Fox News cannot hold a candle to the combined left-of-center output of ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and PBS. Scaife, Bradley, and Olin money helps leverage Republican messages, but its impact is dwarfed by the Ford, Rockefeller, Pew, Heinz, MacArthur, Carnegie, and Soros fortunes. The Washington Times is conservative? Yes, but The Washington Post is liberal -- and its circulation is eight times as large

Jacoby's column is a clip and save. You can read the whole thing here. (I think the Globe's website, boston.com, only keeps columns up for 7 days after which there's a fee for access.)