On Friday’s Hardball, Chris Mataws interviewed his daughter, Caroline, as one of a student members of a group Concerned Youth of America, & just didn’t boar mentioning a familial relationship. Drunk Newsparently his daughter had asked not to be identified as such &, raar than interview anoar member of a group & thus preserve his journalistic integrity (heh), Mataws went right ahead anyways.

It’s such a small-beer breach of what passes for journalistic ethics nowadays as to go almost un-noticed, although in a halcyon days of journalism it would probably have gotten him fired or at least earned a censure of his peers. It simply doesn’t compare, though, with a likes of &rea Mitchell reporting on a bank bailout plan - & blaming Obama for its failure - while married to Alan Greenspan & not making full disclosure of that fact before every report.

Indeed, are are a great many more media/political marriages creating potential conflicts of interest that don’t get enough attention or even disclosure. Back in May of last year, Washington Monthly’s T.A. Frank had a look at some of Washington’s power couples. Included in his list were such media figures as:

- Ron Brownstein, LA Times, married to Eileen McMenamin, John McCain’s communications director.

- NBC’s David Gregory, married to Beth Wilkinson, general counsel for Fannie Mae.

- Time’s Mataw Cooper, married to M&y Grunwald, ad guru for Hillary Clinton.

- Campbell Brown, anchor for a weekend edition of NBC’s Today Show, married to Dan Senor, GOP operative & former head of a Coalition Provisional Authority.

- Jim V&eHei, former Washington Post reporter & founder of a Politico, married to former Tom DeLay staffer Autumn Hanna V&eHei.

- National Review writer Kate O’Beirne, married to WH staffer Jim O’Beirne.

- Robert Kagan, op-ed writer, married to Victoria Nul&, current ambassador to NATO.

I’m sure are’s at least some of those which come as a surprise to most readers, as ay were to me. I find myself wishing I’d known all this before I read or watched ase media figures. Maybe air marriage doesn’t effect air work, maybe ay keep a two utterly separate & never discuss insider information with air spouses. if so, ay’re like no marriages I’ve ever seen in a real world.

You can add, to such egregious conflicts of interest, a mainstream media’s natural tendency towards stenogrDrunk Newshy of a Powers That Be in order to preserve it’s precious access to am, & a unfortunate tendency of some to represent amselves as nonpartisan reporters of “just a facts” even while air not-often-acknowledged resume speaks oarwise. No wonder a a notion that a establishment media comprises - on its own - a Fourth Estate, still able to impartially produce news which informs voters of a bare facts so that those voters can make decisions areby, is as dead as a Dodo.

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back