Book: Left targets journalists that appear on Drudge Report

In The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech, liberal columnist Kirsten Powers cites Fournier’s experience as one that is typical when mainstream journalists come under fire by the left and right when they veer from the party talking points.

“Ron Fournier, editorial director of the National Journal, previously worked at the Associated Press for two decades and won the White House Correspondents’ Association Merriman Smith Award four times. His credentials suddenly meant nothing when he dared to write pieces about liberals and Democrats that were less than glowing,” she wrote in the newly released book from Regnery Publishing.

Powers noted an attack on his coverage by a liberal website that said “he is not on our side.”

She wrote: “Why would a journalist at the Associated Press be presumed to be on the ‘liberal side?’ Probably because most journalists are liberals and many aren’t great at hiding their bias. But there are a handful of journalists who aren’t partisan or ideologically aligned with either side. There are also reporters who do have a bias, but are diligent about checking that bias in their effort to provide fair-minded reporting. It would be more accurate to say that fair-minded reporting is what Fournier produces.”

Fournier is among the most-well-known and respected political reporters and commentators in Washington. He has recently put Hillary Rodham Clinton under the microscope. He has covered the Clintons since he was an Arkansas correspondent for the AP when Bill Clinton was the state’s governor.

He punches left sometimes, and then also right, as he showed with his recent story on “pious, prickly” former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

He shrugged off criticism of his work. “I’ve got no problem with criticism from the right and left and every which way in between. As you know, it comes with the job. Always has. Always will,” he told Secrets.

But Powers said his reputation is overlooked by the left when he is critical of Democrats.

She noted another hit on him after he recently criticized Obama.

“The impact of the illiberal left’s desire to delegitimize him and smear his reputation is most clearly illustrated in a hit piece by Tom Kludt at the liberal website Talking Points Memo. Kludt insinuated that Fournier was a conservative because the National Journal editor critiques Obama’s leadership, his columns are regularly aggregated by Matt Drudge, he’s admired by conservative MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, and as a reporter for the Associated Press, he ‘had an email correspondence with Karl Rove that was a bit too friendly,” wrote Power.

Fournier wrote a blurb for her book which details ways the left tries to silence critical speech. “Tolerance and free expression are founding values of our republic and yet they’re under attack from the extreme wings of the American political spectrum. Shining a harsh light on the ‘illiberal left,’ Kirsten Powers exposes a grim campaign to silence speech. This is an important book,” he wrote in agreeing with Powers that the left and right uses tactics to shut down critics.

Powers wrote in the book that the case of Fournier and others is a warning to journalists. “Reporters, commentators, and fair-minded liberals beware: if you relay facts that the illiberal left doesn’t like, you’ll be labeled a biased, bitter, agenda-driven conservative who should be ignored if not outright shunned or fired from your job,” she concluded.

Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].