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Matt's post isn't directly about media bias, but it captures the point so perfectly that it needs to be repeated: the media's bias isn't about left or right. It's about preserving the "inside the beltway" narrative. His post:

I wonder if really elite pundits like Joe Klein ever feel weird about writing that something might look bad even though it makes sense on the merits. After all, Klein has a substantial ability to affect how things are perceived. He notes that "Just because [liberals are] right about Iraq, and about this escalation, it doesn't mean they won't be blamed by the public if the result of an American withdrawal is lethal chaos in the region and $200 per barrel oil" which is true. On the other hand, if American withdraws and Joe Klein and other similarly situated people all focus their energy on placing the blame where it belongs -- on the war's architects -- then the odds are pretty good that liberals won't be blamed.

The Note's "Gang of 500" business is a joke, but only sort of. A rather small number of writers, producers, and editors for ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, and the Associated Press substantially determine how things will be play in the press. If those people decide that doing something will "look weak" and then cover it as if it does "look weak" it then will, in fact, look weak. If they determine the reverse, the reverse will probably happen.

This is absolutely dead on. Klein acts as if narratives emerge from the ether fully formed. Obviously, they do not. Something "looks weak" only if the media frames it as such. And who is "the media"? It's a small group of people who work inside the Beltway, a small group of which Klein is very much a part.

Here's a simple rule for reading news stories. Every time someone at a major media news organization falls into the passive voice. translate it in your head so that they are the one doing the acting.

They may not want to admit it - hell, they may be so deep in it that they don't even realize they are the ones doing it - but they are the creators and the keepers of narrative.

It "looks weak?" To whom? Why? How? Klein doesn't say. Because ask him to say and he won't be able to tell you.

UPDATE: Interesting. Greg Sargent, in a completely unrelated post, has more. First, an admittedly long excerpt:

What Klein has written here is really revealing about the state of punditry today. Klein agrees with many liberals and Dems -- and even with many lib bloggers -- on the most important policy question of the moment: Whether to escalate the conflict. Yet Klein can't bring himself to acknowledge the possibility that these other people reached the same conclusion he did through purity of motive. He won't allow himself to permit the possibility that people oppose escalation not because they're rooting for failure, but because they genuinely don't believe that success is possible. Why?

Here's a possible answer, and it's something you see again and again in today's pundits. It's not enough for them to be getting six-figure salaries to spout their opinions; to be feted at cocktail parties; invited on TV chat shows; sucked up to by star-struck underlings; and constantly told by colleagues how incisive and witty their latest effort was. No, they also need to feel that they are brave and heroic in holding their opinions, too.

To look into the mirror and see a brave and heroic pundit staring back, of course, you need to flatter yourself into believing that you're challenging entrenched ideas and the people who hold them in some way, even if you aren't. This impression can be created in several ways. One is to simply dream up a whole class of people, claim they hold "extreme" opinions based on nothing at all, and set yourself up as a lonely warrior against them -- preferably while standing shoulder to shoulder with other lonely heroes of moderation like John McCain and Joe Lieberman. That's David Broder's preferred approach. Another way is to dream up a whole series of nefarious but nonexistent motives driving colleagues' opinions, so that you can deprive those colleagues of credit for those opinions, and position yourself as, again, braver and more heroic than they are -- even though you agree with them. That is Klein's approach -- and I submit that at bottom it's all about vanity.

Klein issued a challenge in his post that has already been deftly parried by Boo Man. So here's a challenge for Klein: Back up your arguments with facts and evidence. Produce one example of someone whose comments betray the fact that they're tacitly rooting for American failure. Quote this person. Explain why this person's quotes should be interpreted that way. If you manage to get that far, then maybe consider finding a second example, and even a third. That doesn't sound all that hard, does it?

This fleshes out a bit of what I meant with my "inside the Beltway" line. As the "keepers of the narrative," there's a small group of pundits who have imagined themselves to be both better informed and more intelligent than all of the rest of us. And as a result, they see it as their job to help protect and defend the country against whatever it is that they have decided is "extreme" or "out of bounds."

You can see this phenomenon at work most clearly in the Iraq debate. Any time they want to dismiss an idea, they fall immediately into vague generalization made almost exclusively in the passive voice. And the example Greg uses from Klein is perfect:

[I]t's possible to have been against the war and to hope for the best in Iraq. I'd bet that the overwhelming majority of Americans who now oppose the war are praying for a turn for the better in Iraq. Listening to the leftists, though, it's easy to assume that they are rooting for an American failure....

I've been rooting for U.S. success ever since the invasion because, after the overpowering arrogance and stupidity that led to this disaster, we owe some peace and stability to the Iraqis and the region. For the record, I'm outraged Bush is ignoring the election results and the reality on the ground in Iraq. I think he is sending more young American lives into an impossible situation. I am fairly certain that Bush will wallow amongst our worst presidents for getting us into this mess. But I hope events prove me wrong. I don't even care if Bush gets credit for the "victory" and smirks all the way back to Texas.

"Listening to the leftists, though, it's easy to assume that they are rooting for an American failure..."

True, its not passive voice, but its sufficiently vague that the results are the same. Who are these "leftists" that Klein has been listening to? He doesn't say here because he never says. He simply imagines them, and uses their supposed existence to make himself feel better about whatever it is that he is arguing.

Greg Sargent is right. This really is in many ways about making himself look and feel heroic. On behalf of all decent Americans. he is standing up to the big bad left. Too bad for all of us his imagined antagonists don't exist.