Portfolio’s Jeff Bercovici writes about last night’s first in a series of discussions moderated by CBS’ Jeff Greenfield at the 92nd St. Y. It included a panel of political commentators — Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter (of NBC/MSNBC), Time’s Joe Klein (of CNN), and National Review editor Rich Lowry (of FNC).
Bercovici reports that Alter denied widespread bias against Sen. Hillary Clinton (and received “loud boos” from the crowd), but Klein put the anti-Clinton bias on a certain religious group, and named names.
“I do believe there’s something weird a few of our colleagues have (against Clinton),” Klein said. “They tend to be Roman Catholics, actually. People like Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, Maureen Dowd. They’ve had it in for Bill and Hillary Clinton since Monica Lewinsky.”
Lowry cited last week’s MSNBC debate when discussing the bias against Clinton. “I thought it was obvious that Tim Russert and Brian Williams were harder on Hillary Clinton,” he said.
>Update: Klein apologizes: “I do believe that the media have been tougher on Hillary Clinton than on her opponents this year. I don’t believe it has anything to do with Roman Catholicism and shouldn’t have implied that it did. Stupid. I’m sorry.”
• Related: Leaving religion out of it, the Fox News Watch panel was unanimously in agreement about the media’s favoritism for Sen. Barack Obama. Click continued to see the segment…