Fair & Balanced Fishwrapper

Fishwrapper byline on a Tom Potter story today:

During his first 100 days, Portland Mayor Tom Potter has delighted progressive groups that supported him while at the same time gaining the respect of some of his critics.

Now that's hard hitting. Potter has "delighted" and gained "respect." No mention of the fact that he has "outraged" some of his "critics" or "angered" law-abiding citizens. No, just delighted and gained respect.

Imaginary byline on current media whipping boy Tom DeLay:

While facing withering attacks for alleged ethics violations DeLay may also have lost support of fellow Republicans.

Don't tell me you haven't see headlines/bylines like this recently. They are almost uniform across the board, "DeLay is alleged to have violated ethics rules and [fill in the blank traitor Republican] is chastising him."
The traitor Republican, who was probably hated by the media just last week, is now a "maverick" and a media darling until he is no longer useful or another traitor Republican comes up with a better sound bite and worse denunciation of the media's whipping boy.

The current most popular headline is Santorum: DeLay needs to answer questions and is currently being used by ABC, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, USA Today, The San Francisco Chronicle, and more.

In the Washington Post version they use an unnamed source to say:
One of DeLay's GOP colleagues in the House called him an "absolute embarrassment" and doubled DeLay would last as majority leader.

If you are a Washington Post editor and you want to call someone names in a news article you put it in and just attribute the quote to an unnamed "colleague." This is how conservatives are treated in the media. Liberals, according to the media, spend their time "delighting" and gaining "respect of their critics." It's fair and balanced.