Jim Rutenberg, a Times reporter whose work about the Hagel nomination has been criticized here for dwelling on the anonymous funding of Hagel opponents without mentioning the anonymous funding of groups paying Senator Hagel, or other groups that are not conservative, bends over backward today in a front-page profile of Hagel opponent Michael Goldfarb to appear evenhanded. He mentions "the Emergency Committee for Israel, an anonymously financed group that advertises against President Obama and Congressional Democrats as insufficiently supportive of Israel." But he also mentions "the anonymously financed liberal blog ThinkProgress that frequently attacks the Kochs."
It appears as though Mr. Rutenberg is being fair, mentioning the anonymously funded nature of both liberal and conservative groups. But the article also mentions two other anonymously financed liberal publications, the Nation and the Columbia Journalism Review, without mentioning the anonymously financed nature of either one of them. So even when it's trying to appear fair, the Times can't seem to avoid the reflex to describe conservative groups as "anonymously financed," while omitting that description in the case of other left-leaning groups and publications. The inconsistency is grating; the Times should either describe all such groups as anonymously funded or none of them, rather than applying the description at the whim of the reporter and leaving readers to speculate about the motivation for including the description in some cases and omitting it in others.