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# Posted 9:16 PM by Ariel David Adesnik

BAD NEWS & DIRTY POLITICS: In yesterday's Best of the Web, James Taranto catches WaPo correspondent Dana Milbank admitting that the media is looking for bad news in Iraq. Presumably for reasons of space, Jim left out the following Milbank quote, which I thought was even more damning:

MILBANK: What happened with President Bush is he was doing well for so long because of September 11. I think there was a lot of pent-up frustration in the press corps. They were waiting for that moment when there was, No. 1, a scandal, or, No. 2, a major policy failure.

KURTZ: They were waiting to jump on the president, waiting for him to stumble.

MILBANK: Yes, and that's not Bush in particular. Any president would get that.

What's really surprising is that Milbank answered Kurtz's question in the affirmative. I assumed Kurtz was baiting him, daring him to say the media wanted to make Bush look bad.

Now Milbank is probably right that the media would do that to any president. Hey, even Jimmy Carter got mercilessly thrashed by his ideological teammates.

But it's still pretty warped to think that the media would want to take the President down just because of his success (or perception thereof). That's even worse than an ideological or partisan bias. At least in those cases it's a matter of principle or politics. But resenting someone for their success is just short-sighted and childish, not to mention a betrayal of journalists obligation to their audience.

Then again, it isn't fair to condemn the entire press corps on the basis of one statment from one correspondent. Besides, Milbank deserves credit for being honest, i.e. telling us how he does his reporting.

CLARIFICATION: The original version of this post referred to Dana Milbank using feminine pronouns. This was a reflection of my ignorance, not an insidious effort to undermine Mr. Milbank's masculinity. And thanks to RiceGrad for catching my mistake. Also, Josh reminds me (via e-mail) that Aziz Poonawalla is a woman, not a man.

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