Pundit Boxscore for Wednesday 7 April 2004

100% PARTISAN, 100% TRUE: The Lying in Ponds rankings are an attempt to quantify partisanship, and are not intended as a general purpose guide to the quality of columnists. But the implicit assumption here is that the excessive partisanship attributed to the top few pundits is clearly a bad thing, which contradicts their presumption of independence and distorts their commentary to the point of uselessness. But many feel strongly that a columnist's partisanship is acceptable as long as they are truthful. For example, here is reader Daniel Aronstein:

I meant that YOU shouldn't judge columnists by their partisanship, but by their truthfulness.

A partisan columnist may simply choose to NOT write about the aspects of their party with which they disagree -- preferring instead to discuss them privately, among co-partisans.

This is NOT immoral or dishonest or bad journalism. It's nothing more than not wanting to display one's own dirty laundry in public.

Such a journalist might have a 100% partisan rating FROM YOU, and yet every column they write might be 100% true.

It is NOT the job of a columnist who writes about politics to write WITHOUT REGARD FOR PARTISAN POLITICS. Our political system is "partisanal" -- factional to use an older term. Reasonable columnists committed to positive social change might see the benefits of directing their well-reasoned and principled attacks to the faction they see as a bad political force, and not publish negative attacks on their own side (and thereby NOT give "ammo" to the "enemy").

As long as the columns these columnists write are truthful, and are argued logically, and have an overt set of values -- and no hidden agenda -- then they are good columns by good columnists.