(Originally published in Greater Democracy)

As a blogger that received press credentials to cover the Democratic National Convention, I found myself being interviewed by members of the mainstream media, including the Wall Street Journal. One of the big topics was dealing with bias. Many bloggers, myself included, wear our biases on our shirtsleeves, or often in the form of political buttons. I am no exception. The argument goes that if you are up front about your biases, people reading what you write can adjust for them. However, if you pretend they aren’t there, and strive to be as unbiased as possible, you will still have your biases slip through. The other side of the argument is that no matter how unbiased you really are, people will attack you for being biased, and if you have been maintaining you are unbiased, they will call you a liar/

So, this past week’s hot email has particularly caught my attention. A week ago, Campaign Confidential published a letter from Farnaz Fassihi entitled, ‘From Baghdad’. There are many copies of this letter now online, and instead of printing excerpts from it, I will simply say that it provides a stark contrast to the Iraq Bush described in the debate and I encourage you to read the letter. I suspect the stark contrast is part of the reason the article spread so quickly.
Using Technorati, you can watch how the letter spread and some of the responses to it. Mithras picked up on the story fairly early on who notes, “The e-mail also purportedly was forwarded originally by Andrew Rosenthal, the deputy editorial page editor of the New York Times, and a famous apologist for the Times's pro-war coverage by Judith Miller.”

Hellfire picks up the thread with “Watching Farnaz Fassihi's Email Run Around The Web”. He writes,

“I still think the right half is going to ignore it - what else can they do? It's damn hard to refute Fassihi's observations and conclusions. She's actually there, on the ground, living in the midst of the situation. She's a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and therefore her observations and conclusions can't be swept aside with the brand of the "liberal" media.

Still, I think they're up to the challenge. If they can pull down the statue of Dan Rather, I'm sure they can find some way to bring down the Wall Street Journal.”

One person commented, “Has anybdy checked the authenticity of the Fassihi email from Iraq? Let's remeber Rather. It would be easy for those right wing con-artists to fake something like that and then capitalize on the fall out.”

Several sources have verified the authenticity of the Fassihi email. In particular, there is a good article at Poynter Online where Romenesko notes an email from Fassihi saying “Hi, Yes, I am the author. The e-mail is authentic, my reaction is that I'm stunned at how this has rapidly become a global chain mail. I wrote it as a private e-mail to my friends as I often do about once a month, writing them about my impressions of Iraq, my personal opinons and my life here. and then it got forwarded around as you can see in a very unexpected way.”

Romenesko also points to a New York Post article, entitled, ‘WSJ Editor Backs Iraq Screed’. ‘Wall Street Journal Editor Paul Steiger has come to the defense of his beleaguered Baghdad correspondent… the Wall Street Journal editor said the musings in no way distorted his reporter's ability to deliver fair coverage from Baghdad.” I am sure there is no bias implied in referring to the email as a ‘screed’, the writer as ‘beleaguered’ or questioning whether or not the ‘musings’ ‘distort’ the reporters ability to deliver fair coverage.

Greg Mitchell at Editor and Publisher also writes about the story. He provides a little more information about Fassihi: “Fassihi, 32, covered the 9/11 terror attacks in New York for the The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. and has also worked for the Providence Journal.”

The Editor and Publisher article is the one that Jock referred to here a few days ago.

Leading the attack to discredit the email, Frank Myers posts a picture of Fassihi with the text: “‘Fair and Balanced Reporter?’ or ‘Biased and Inaccurate Reporter?’” He has commented on several other blogs pointing back to his site. One comment he received was, “Are you saying it's impossible to be biased and also accurate?” That gets down to much of the debate about blogs. From this, we can only assume that Frank is inaccurate.

Andrew Sullivan also focuses on bias, when he writes, “Is this reporter biased? Perhaps. Is it that bad? I sincerely hope not. But are they making all this up? I seriously doubt it.”

However, questioning whether the reporter is biased is not sufficient for some people. neo-neocon writes, “So, who is Fassihi? She is a 31-year-old woman, a Muslim-American with Iranian-born parents… So, it appears that all of Fassahi's foreign correspondence has occurred post-9/11. She is quite new to the game. My guess is that she may have been pressed into foreign-correspondent service post-9/11 because of her language and ethnic background. Until her recent Iraqi stint, her foreign correspondence seems to have involved mainly what used to be called "human interest" stories, mostly in Iran and Afghanistan: Valentine's Day in Tehran, how Iranian women deal with fashion, the plight of Afghan refugees.”

The liberal bloggers refer to posts like this as “poisoning the well”.

I did do a little research and found a couple other articles by Fassihi online. An article she wrote November 30th, 2001, For many, home is a blanket and the food is weeds has been republished on many sites. A subsequent article is available in the American Society of Newspaper Editors. These articles focus on the plight of Afghan refugees. Another article, which she wrote for the Wall Street Journal is entitled, Iraqi Bride's Checklist: Send Out Invitations, Worry About Security

Fassihi does write about the plight of Afghan refugees and about “human interest” stories. Does that disqualify her to common on the human condition? No, I think it makes her more qualified.

It is a long-standing tradition to shoot the messenger when we don’t like the message. It is interesting to watch how this on plays out.