You know, I got about halfway through this, and my eyes began to glaze over as I realized just how foolish it all was.

The press, and especially the New York Times, has become a parody of itself, chasing their own tales, thinking they can identify every inconsistency as potential lies to be tracked down and nailed down and of course you get one inconsistency and that leads to another and soon you start analyzing it all and it never occurs to you that what you're trying to do--GET THE STORY--is lost in the pursuit of navel-gazing and questioning other peoples' motives.

No wonder the Times is and has been so bad in its political coverage. Its constant digging for scandal has crippled it.

Oh, and I'd be remiss in not noting just how arrogant and self-important they come across as. Yeeesh.

You know its kinda funny how the Jason Blair 'scandal' was the coup de grace for the Times with fervidly righteous obituaries being penned all over the blogosphere and how for a couple of months conservatives would cry 'Jason Blair' any time it ran a story they didn't like. That got damn Liberal Media finally getting its cumuppance. It was a thing of beauty.

But Blair was a just self-aggrandising liar. He didn't have any massive agenda, no enemies to be stricken down. Just inconsequental lies lies and more lies to give his pieces more color, to advance his career.

Miller, though - Miller was a highly credentialed reporter whose shrilling for the Republicans was page one news day after day, it really did influence the media climate in favour of the Republican party line.

But now its suddenly all just foolish naval-gazing and digging for scandal! Avert your eyes, young ones. Lets just brush all those troublesome 'inconsistancies' under the carpet now, shall we? Its time to move on. Inconsistancy my a***. Breaking every rule in the book about sources and sourcing, ignoring an agenda so colossaly obvious such as the fact that Chalibi WANTED SADDAM'S JOB! [and good for him let me say], maybe.

Of course we can all run along now, safe in the knowledge that the NYT has a basement full of WMDs that they won't tell anyone about after the election, can't we.

*whistles inconspicuously*

Well, you make a good point Max, I must admit, but I don't quite see it that way.

The NYT can always be counted on to take the anti-Bush line no matter what goes on, and this story I just linked to showed exactly the same thing--calling people liars and whatnot, and "apologizing" in excruciatingly byzantine logic for not "working hard enough" to get to the real story when in fact they overthought everything in the first place.

From my perspective, every piece of it, whether it worked in Republicans' favor or not, is part and parcel with the fact that the New York Times is a joke when it comes to any issue that remotely touches on politics. They're so pompous, so self-serious, and so self-serving, and so permanently stuck in the "let's assume our leaders are full of shit at every possible opportunity" mode, they can no longer even trust themselves let alone anyone else.

Here's a radical thought: assume that the people in power, no matter who they are or what party they're affiliated with, genuinely want to do a good job and genuinely want to do what's in the best interests of the country. A minority will be soulless or evil. A certain amount of self-serving nature will always be there, but basically, Democrat or Republican, most people in power are basically decent. They know they've been elected and not appointed by God, they know they won't be in power forever, and they know that lives are at stake no matter what they do.

Assume that when they say something, they mean it. Assume they have the best intentions. Assume that most of the time, things are really as they seem and there are no sinister hidden agendas. Look for evidence of dishonesty, but don't make it your standing mode of operation.

Do you know how much better a lot of punditry and political reporting would be if more people would try to act that way?

Not only better, but more accurate and less nutty.

Okay, having read the article.... I think Moore misses a few of the points he -almost- makes and should have hammered on, and essentially treats Miller as a liar on everything else she says simply because she believed Chalabi.

I note that it's not the first time we've had a situation where person or group A got intel from person or group B, asked person or group C to confirm it, and they had gotten the same info from person or group B so they're like, "Yeah, that's right, our sources, who we cannot name to you, say the same thing as your sources, who you cannot name to us".

Oh, and if Iran set this whole thing up to try to turn Iraq into an Islamic State, they picked the wrong patsies, the joke's on them.

As to the points Moore almost makes but (IMO) backs off from, the basic one is that it's a BAD IDEA for Big Media to take a rumour and run with it as fact just because it makes convenient headlines.

When I was a working reporter around 1961-1962, I never once heard one of our people ever refer to such as thing as the "journalism profession". It was just the "news business". Nothing more.

Sort of like selling corned beef on rye sandwiches with side orders of potato salad. If the food looks and tastes good, and you don't get the galloping shits or even a stomach ache from shoveling it into your mouth, it's okay.

Same with news. Just don't expect to much from big, popular institutions, just because they act pretentious and have been around for a long time in a big building in mid-town Manhattan. There are places that will sell you a 20-buck corned beef sandwich, and they expect a big tip too. But their stuff may be no better than at Lou's Basement Deli or somesuch, where you take it out with you in a paper sack. Lou's may be just as tasty as at the fancy restaurant, comes at 5-6 bucks a pop, and Lou is probably in better position to make sure some kid in his kitchen didn't pick a booger out of his nose and insert it into your sandwich while making up orders.

Moral of the story: Maybe, just maybe, big journalism isn't always good journalism.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

The NYT can always be counted on to take the anti-Bush line no matter what goes on, and this story I just linked to showed exactly the same thing..

And again, Dean compleeetly misses the point. The Times has been under enormous pressure to come clean. Most people by now were familiar with the Miller-Chalibi story, and if you aquaint yourself with it from sources other than the mealy-mouthed CYAing NYT you'll begin to realise what a spectacular FU the whole thing was. Anyway, the point that you're missing is that coming clean about and UNTRUE and PRO-REPUBLICAN series of stories is not anti-Bush. Its finally admitting how over-eager they were to run with the RNC line they were in the first place. Journalists are meant to run corrections when they screw up. You're a clever guy Dean. Surely you can see that this cannot be spun as an anti-Bush bias. Daniel Okrent has probably been getting more complaints about this than any single other story in the past year.

And no, journalists should not assume the people they cover have the best intentions. It would be an abdication of duty to presume anything. In any case, 'intentions' a very spinnable concept. I'm sure Chalibi had the best intentions, getting rid of Saddam. Does that mean the Times should have let itself become his uncritical mouthpiece? No. Not at all.

Dean,
I'm sure you appreciate the irony of complaining about how boring a news item that your blog links to is:)

Unanswered Questions:
1. Was Judith Miller the recipient of a letter laced with anthrax or was it fake?
2. Did Judith Miller's letter mention J-Lo...like the letter that killed the tabloid editor in Florida?
3. If Judith Miller's letter mentioned a possible plot to destroy the Sears Tower...how come the New York Times never printed that detail?
4. Since Judith Miller was a victim of either the anthrax mailer or a copycat...why does the New York Times still allow her to report on related topics for which she can't possibly be "fair and balanced" about?
5. Does Judith Miller contribute to articles that don't bear her name?
6. Does Judith Miller agree with her one-time co-writer - Laurie Mylroie - that Saddam was responsible for 9-11?
7. Given Judith Miller's relationship to Laurie Mylroie...why was she allowed to write about the Richard A. Clarke book that re-ignited the controversy about Bushie's linking of Iraq to Al-Qaeda?
8. Why hasn't the Times printed a correction about the pre-9/11 article by Judith Miller that claimed that chemical weapons were not being manufactured at Fort Dietrick (which was later disproven)?
9. Does Judith Miller have any connections to Dr. Iyad Alawi (who has spent mucho greenbacks to promote himself in this country in the last year)?
10. What e-mails did Judith Miller exchange with David Kelly...and for how long did they correspond?
11. What kind of book is Judith Miller working on RIGHT NOW? The weapons of mass destruction compiled by Iran or Syria?
Why Are We Back In Iraq?