jonathan karl: asshole of the week.

jonathan karl is an abc congressional reporter who wrote a story that is attracting some interest lately. it concerns a website that the obama administration has put up to prove how effective the stimulus has been, showing different congressional districts where jobs were created. the problem is, there are a number of non-existent congressional districts listed on the site. this may be mere incompetency on the part of the webmaster for that particular site or it may be something worse. still, it's hard to imagine such diligent reporting on something so minor taking place during the bush administration.

this morning i happened to hear karl on brian lehrer's NPR radio show. they talked about the misattributed stimulus business and then lehrer switched gears. since karl is a congressional reporter, lehrer decided to ask him about all the stonewalling republicans are doing in regards to obama's attempts to place judges on the federal bench. karl, who'd handled himself with considerable aplomb before that moment suddenly turned into a stuttering, equivocating mess. before he could even begin to answer lehrer's question, he had to stumble through a long pre-amble making it perfectly clear that both parties have done this and the democrats have a long history of obstructionism themselves. and this is true, to some degree. but the republicans are seemingly working to set records for obstruction at this point. they're outdoing the democrats by leaps and bounds. so why can't karl simply say this? because when the truth seems to have a liberal bias, reporters don't want to get anywhere near it.