Congratulations, Elisabeth Bumiller

Elisabeth Bumiller, MY Elisabeth Bumiller, is racking up the awards. Back in May, courtesy of the Gadflyer, she had an award named for her. It's an award for fearful reporting that nips at the ankles of issues rather than going for the jugular, but it certainly counts as winning something. Now she's won the not-so-coveted Wimblehack competition, which went to the worst campaign reporter of the 2004 season. Matt Taibbi writes:

This habit of taking at face value the unconfirmable assertions about the personal feelings of officials—assertions hand-delivered to the journalist by a paid mouthpiece whose very job is to deadpan preposterous pieces of mythmaking to the media—is nothing new to most political reporters. But almost no one consumes this stuff more eagerly than Bumiller.

He right on both counts; Ms. Bumiller loves the happy adminstration quote that she can get effortlessly and she's not the only one. But as for overall political reporting, she's not the worst of the political reporters out there - or even at the NYT. That honor goes to Jodi Wilgoren without a doubt. Ms. Bumiller avoids the tough issue and shills for BushCo but Jodi Wilgoren is the bored mean girl, which is worse because she has made a career lately of tearing people down for no good reason and obscuring important issues, which is a real disservice to NYT readers and the political process. If she were a real investigative reporter, digging up important facts, I'd be happy to read her stuff. But Wilgoren's writing is lazy and sarcastic with no real interest in facts She stubbornly pretends not to understand simple concepts, i.e. Kerry can be very wealthy and still want to help the poor, when that means she'll get a good line out of it. Ms. Bumiller doesn't make any of those mistakes. Ms. Bumiller, a more talented writer, is gracious to a fault.

Another problem with Taibbi's analysis is that he lumps the White House Letters in with Ms. Bumiller's other reporting when he makes the point that her stuff lacks substance. We can all agree that the WH Letters are horrible - pure PR for the RNC. But their mandate is not to cover matters of life and death. They're supposed to look at the people behind the throne and look at some cutesy angle from the week's news. They are really damaging only when Ms. Bumiller forgets that mission and tries to tackle serious issues from that cutesy, fawning perspective. Taibbi uses the one about < ahref="http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Battle-of-the-bulge-ruffles-Bush-tailor/2004/11/08/1099781324308.html?oneclick=true">BushCo's tailor as an example of irrelevent, cheery reporting, but that's what it's supposed to be. My biggest complaint about that column is that there is no comparable free ad space for the opposition. But that's not Ms. Bumiller's fault.

So here I am defending Elisabeth Bumiller. I'll do it happily because while her sins are legion, she doesn't compound them by being the viper that Wilgoren is. If every political reporter made Ms. Bumiller's mistakes and choices, we'd be in deep trouble for sure, but it wouldn't be the poisonous kind of trouble that Wilgoren's writing creates. If the NYT can't find someone to report on the BushCo administration honestly, then they should find someone to cover the opposition who is equally blind to her subjects' faults and pathetically eager to curry their good will. Of course, they should find reporters and editors that will actually work for a living, lose their fun Washington friends and get the stories behind all the politicians they cover. I won't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.