...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Thursday, May 29, 2003
      ( 10:24 AM )
 
If You're Gonna Fake It, Be Good At It

Alexander Cockburn has a fantastic article in the June 9 issue of The Nation. It's about the "scandal" surrounding Jayson Blair...but reveals the real story: how lauded "journalists" who have claimed the sacrosanct high ground in this episode are themselves some of the most disgustingly misleading writers around...namely, William Saffire, Thomas Friedman, Judith Miller... Sadly, the article isn't online right now. But I urge you to get a copy:

How Blair must be chafing at the unfairness of it all!
Why him? He makes up a few blind quotes from
high-level FBI official and prosecutors, and the skies
fall in. He even has to endure the indignity of having
William Safire, unindicted besmircher of a thousand
reputations, pontificating about journalistic integrity.
Where are the whole special supplements of the New
York Times that would be required to apologize for its
baseless insinuations against Wen Ho Lee (a Jeff
Gerth special, written with James Risen and abetted
by William Safire), or against the Clintons for their real
estate dealings in Whitewater (another Jeff Gerth special)?

...

I write this column on May 21, a day, like
so many other days, when I turn to the front
page of the Times and find yet one more article
by Judith Miller on the search for weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq. The words "official" and
"officials" are used nineteen times, only once with
an actual name attached. There are military officials,
intelligence officials, White House officials, but
never a human actually identified by Miller.

It was a great article and it highlights the entire hypocrisy surrounding the Jayson Blair episode and the pontificating from the journalists and talking heads who make actual reporting a joke.

And the beat goes on.

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