It's only news if the WSJ breaks form and says somthing truthful in opinion pices and editorials it publishes.

"...Dammit, whatever happened to the concept of accountability for catastrophic failure?..." -Al Gore

Journalists in the 1940s, '50s and early '60s tended to believe they had a duty to buttress Americans' faith in their leaders and their government.

So it's better to ignore uncomfortable truths in favor of supporting your local dictator.  I suspect that real journalists might be troubled by this.

Oh, there you are, Perry. -Phineas -SLB-

My grandfather taught me not to trust authority when I was practically a toddler. But I first understood in my heart to be skeptical after the U-2 incident in 1960 when I was 14.

Subsequently, I read David Wise's and Thomas Ross's book  The U-2 Affair, and then, in the spring of 1964, their book The Invisible Government, the first book to examine, however shallowly, the role of the CIA in overthrowing governments, among other misbehavior.

Like CIA Director John McCone, who tried to suppress that book, Barone belongs to that coterie of Americans  which believes that the job of journalists is as lapdogs to authority not protectors of the people's rights. Until the late '60s, all but a few admirable exceptions among journalists felt they should be lapdogs, too, although they wouldn't have called themselves that anymore than the vast number of "journalists" who are lapdogs today would adopt that description. It was only a few who took on "the Establishment." Seymour Hersh, for instance, had a devil of a time getting his My-Lai massacre story published.

While the Bush Regime goes about trying to punish that minority of journalists who want to do the job the Constitution protects them for doing, Barone and others of his ilk seek to make lapdoggery the essence of patriotism. "Hack" is such a gentle epithet.  

"We're trying to give the illusion of due diligence." --Bennett Holiday to Jimmy Pope in Syriana

http://tinyurl.com/qnusm

As for Barone's "Journalists in the 1940s, '50s and early '60s tended to believe they had a duty to buttress Americans' faith in their leaders and their government. Journalists since Vietnam and Watergate have tended to believe that they have a duty to undermine such faith, especially when the wrong party is in office", well, he is unknowingly describing himself.

Other Barone doozies:

July 25, 2005

...Coverage of Bush during the 2004 campaign was heavily negative; for months the mainstream media mostly ignored the Swift Boat Vets' charges against John Kerry and broadcast accusations against Bush based on forged documents eight weeks before the election..."

(just what universe does Barone exist in if he believes the mainstream media ingored the swiftobating of Kerry--in fact, they ate it up)

&

"...Now the unsupported charges that "Bush lied" about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have been rekindled via criticism of Karl Rove. A key witness for the Democrats and mainstream media was former diplomat Joseph Wilson. Unfortunately for his advocates, he turned out to be a liar..."

(Michael, back on the lithium, please)

May 15, 2006

"...All the more so because Old Media in this country, more than in Britain, is dominated by a left that incessantly peppers the right with ridicule and criticism, while it lavishes the center-left with celebration and praise..."

(anyone who read Eric Alterman's book "What Liberal Media," chock full of documentation disproving Barone's thesis, will see this the charade)

In fact, go to the following link for a grand list of Barone's errors where you will see that Barone is the Dean of Hackology:

http://tinyurl.com/lw3ct

The Republicans are now an amoral, self-serving cabal fomenting divisiveness and villification. To them, truth and principles are perversions that only hinder.