Ah. I had not seen this online chat by Washington Post national political editor John Harris. Kudos to Wonkette, which directs me to Harris's wish that more of us saw the lighter side of things:

  Inside the Bubble: Crankospheric - Wonkette: WP politics editor John Harris: "For all its interesting and useful features, some things I don't like about the on-line crankosphere are its frequent humorlessness..."

I guess that, as Chief Crank, I should tell Harris that we find enormous humor in the fact that Patrick Ruffini, who was Harris's only named example of those who view "White House Briefing" as afflicted with the dread "liberal bias," is a senior Republican operative. And we find even more humor in Harris's eager hope that others would overlook this.

Let's rewind to Harris's online chat at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2005/12/0

8/DI2005120801368.html:

Sterling, Va.: When will you fess up to what exactly you know/knew about Patrick Ruffini and when exactly you knew it? Your unwillingness to comment makes the WP look really bad in light of the Woodward mess. Or won't the White House permit you to comment?

 

John F. Harris: I said I was not going to return much to the Froomkin matter today, but I'm going to take this one because it bothers me. Also because many other questions I'm not posting are on a similar theme. I did refuse to answer questions posed by a blogger named Brad Delong asking whether I knew that one of the people on record complaining about the confusion over White House Briefing was affiliated with Republicans. As a journalist, I hate not answering questions, even from (in this case) someone who clearly was coming from a point of view quite hostile to me. But I had jointly decided with colleagues that I had responded enough to the blogosphere, so I took a pass. I'll address the matter here. I did know that some people raising questions about Froomkin are Republicans...

What's this question about? Let's go back to Jay Rosen interviewing John Harris on Jay's PressThink http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/:

  Jay Rosen: You also said, "I perceive a good bit of [White House Briefing's] commentary on the news as coming through a liberal prism--or at least not trying very hard to avoid such perceptions." But you don't give any examples or links to past columns, and Deborah Howell, who also made this point, doesn't give any examples, so it's hard for readers to judge what these observations are based on. Could you help me out here? What issues does WHB tend to view through a liberal prism? Can you point to columns that you had in mind? You also say that it may be true that Froomkin would do the [White House Briefing] column the same way if Kerry had won the `04 election; but if that's so, doesn't that undercut the notion of a liberal prism?

 

John Harris: How Dan would be writing about a Kerry administration is obviously an imponderable. Does Dan present a liberal worldview? Not always, but cumulatively I think a great many people would say yes--enough that I don't want them thinking he works for the news side of the Post. Without agreeing with the views of this conservative blogger who took on Froomkin, I would say his argument does not seem far-fetched to me.

"This conservative blogger" is Patrick Ruffini. Jay Rosen writes:

 When Harris sent me his answers to my questions, I did not examine carefully his link to Ruffini. I scanned it, said to myself, "This looks like standard brand dispute-everything-that-harms-Bush right side blogging," but I was moving quickly so as to strike while the issue was hot. I didn't look into who Ruffini was. I was surprised that he would use something that called Froomkin, his Post colleague, a "second rate hack," but I figured he was sending a message about how pissed his guys were. It was his link, his evidence, his attempt to document his charge; and I wanted to faithfully re-produce what he told me. You will notice that I did not add my commentary at all in the interview, except in so far as it is implied in my questions. I realized who Ruffini was when others started blogging about it...

Who is Patrick Ruffini? Patrick Ruffini is eCampaign Director for the Republican National Committee and was Webmaster for Bush-Cheney 2004.

Now at one level this is hilarious. To paraphrase, Jay Rosen asks John Harris, "Why do you think 'White House Briefing' has a liberal political bias?" And Harris responds, "Because Patrick Ruffini, the Bush-Cheney 2004 Webmaster and eCampaign Director for the Republican National Committee, says so." That's a very good joke.

On a second level, some people think that it is not quite so funny. John Harris--remember the "I did know that some people raising questions about Froomkin are Republicans" above? That's what this is about--chose to sell Patrick Ruffini to Jay Rosen as "this conservative blogger" rather than as "the Bush-Cheney 2004 Webmaster." That's like identifying James Carville as "the spouse of a senior Republican strategist." That's like Judy Miller promising Scooter Libby that she would identify him not as Vice President Cheney's chief-of-staff but as a "former Capitol Hill staffer." Few newspaper executive and managing editors find Judy Miller-style sourcing ethics funny at all.

But I will claim that on a third level, it's even funnier. Remember: John Harris got into this claiming that "White House Briefing" threatened his staff's "'only asset -- our credibility' as objective news reporters."