Reuters Gets Spun: Glenn Greenwald, a conservative blogger who really, really doesn’t like the Bush administration, picks up on a quote by Scott McClellan in response to calls for President Bush to be censured over his warrantless wiretapping (hat tip to Media Orchard). Said McClellan: “I think it does raise the question, how do you fight and win the war on terrorism?” McClellan said. “And if Democrats want to argue that we shouldn’t be listening to al Qaeda communications, it’s their right and we welcome the debate. We are a nation at war.”

No Democrat has suggested that we should not be listening to Al Qaeda. To the best of my knowledge no Democrat has argued anything remotely similar to that. But Reuters regurgitated the McClellan quote without comment or correction, and Greenwald argues that “no journalist ought to pass along this falsehood without pointing out that it is factually false.”

It’s almost impossible to imagine a mainstream media outlet allowing a Democrat to get away with the equivalent: “If the Republicans want to argue that they should be allowed to wiretap any American, even one with no connection to crime or terrorism, for no good reason except that they feel like it, that’s their right and we welcome the debate.” Such a quote would surely be followed by an explanation that that’s a pretty grotesque caricature of the administration’s position.

So is this media bias? Or are the Republicans just so much better at this kind of spin than the guys on the other side of the aisle?