The American Spectator

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Media Matters

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Uh, Rem. Are we talking Nighthawks here, or Boulevard of Broken Dreams? Step away from the paintings, dude. If I'm a loser and I read one of your papers, just what is it you're editing, anyway?

While there's no denying the usefulness of a big news budget, I'd take Michael Yon and his shoestring reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan over Christiane Amanpour and her politically correct analysis any day. Losers like me trust combat reporting from correspondents who served honorably in Special Forces.

Even with all the resources of CNN at her command, not to mention her piercing eyes, no-nonsense bangs, and safari jacket, Amanpour makes laughable mistakes in her depiction of subjects like "God's Warriors." She is by no means alone.

When the media does not make mistakes egregious enough to warrant placement on a list like Randall Hoven's, it lapses into self-congratulatory soliloquies like Rem Rieder's. The problem with that kind of dinner-theater Hamlet is that it ignores the newsroom culture that still allows an old CBS hand like Bob Schieffer to misattribute Senator John McCain's fading popularity to his support for war in Iraq -- and never mind that Senator McCain himself cites "the immigration issue" as the reason for his abysmal poll numbers.

If you want to talk whitewash, what Walter Duranty of the New York Times did to win his Pulitzer Prize in 1932 is no different from what Vladimir Putin is doing now. And there is no excuse for the way the once-storied BBC permits anti-Christian and anti-Semitic slurs on its Internet message boards, but instantly removes anything that might be construed as anti-Muslim.

What journalism needs (if I may make so bold as to prescribe) is an examination of conscience, not a smooth-talking entrepreneur who can lead newspaper executives into the promised land of publicly subsidized websites.

Analysis that too often boils down to "my child is an honor student, but my president is a moron" deserves neither eyeballs nor subscription dollars. Professional journalism will rebound only if journalists can regain the trust they started squandering even before Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford granted the American branch of the profession a stay of execution by playing Woodward and Bernstein as larger-than-life.

topics:
Education, John McCain, Vladimir Putin, Business, Law, Iraq, Russia, NATO, Immigration, Oil