Three cheers for predictably liberal columns by E&P's editor

Editor & Publisher's editor, Greg Mitchell, wrote a piece yesterday showing just the sort of "unbiased" analysis that makes E&P, according to its mission statement, "the authoritative journal covering all aspects of the North American newspaper industry." And I applaud E&P for running it.

In the piece, Mitchell attacks Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen for a piece Cohen wrote three years ago. Apparently Mitchell approved of a piece Cohen wrote this week ("Bush Wanted War"), but it reminded him of a more hawkish Cohen column of several years ago. So Mitchell took the opportunity to lay into Cohen:

That’s all well and good, but where was Cohen a little more than three years ago, when this fact was as plain as the smirk on the president’s face, and the columnist agitated for war anyway?

If there was an “I’m sorry for being so stupid” embedded in Cohen’s column I didn’t spot it.

This piece of "unbiased" analysis comes from E&P's editor, no less.

While I'm not generally inclined to agree with Mitchell's politics--if his point of view isn't apparent from the excerpt above, skim some of his prior columns; you'll get the idea quickly--I find his column a helpful tool in understanding the biases behind the E&P leadership.

Indeed I think it would be helpful if all supposedly unbiased journals made the biases of their leadership known. (In fact I've been quite critical when journals hide who their leadership really is.)

So, three cheers to E&P for publishing its editor's predictably liberal columns. They let the E&P reader beware.