Need you ask?

I guess not all Gold Star mothers have (in Maureen Dowd’s memorable words) “absolute moral authority.” Apparently only the nutcases like Cindy Sheehan do, perhaps because they tell the press what they want to hear:

Julia Conover lost her son, Marine Lance Cpl. Brandon Dewey, to a suicide bomber in Iraq exactly two months ago to the day Monday. She, too, attended the Modesto funeral of Lance Cpl. Long. She

How come the media isn’t 24/7 about this “civil war”?

Eyewitnesses said most of those wounded in Monday’s fighting in the Gaza Strip were policemen who tried to prevent Fatah gunmen from taking over government buildings and security installations. The two sides exchanged gunfire for several hours in scenes that many Palestinians said were reminiscent of the civil war in Lebanon in the 1970s.

Probably because they can’t figure out a way to pin it on America, and George Bush. They’re probably even having trouble fingering Israel for it, though that’s usually a piece of cake for them.

From an entertaining Jonah G-File:

Generic punditry is easy. Opinions are like Eric Alterman, everybody has one. Oh, wait, that

I wasn’t sure whether to categorize this as space, or media criticism. Jeff Foust reviews what sounds like kind of a mess of an article about NASA’s space exploration plans at Rolling Stone. Don’t these people have fact checkers? If I were a journalist working in a subject area unfamiliar to me, I’d run the piece past some people who might be expected to know what they’re talking about, and I’d be embarrassed to get so much wrong in print.

But that’s just me. I guess they don’t mind being viewed as foolish by those more knowledgable.

Hannity, Colmes and Greta are defending Larry King against his own management at CNN.

Which reminds me of his near interview with Osama a few years ago.

Moody’s is downgrading the Gray Lady’s debt ratings. And in a Mickey-Rooney/Shirley-Temple, “let’s put on a show” moment, employees of the San Jose Mercury News are putting up a web site to “save our paper.”

It’s dead, Jim.

In comments to this post, John Kelly of Florida Today writes:

As for Ken’s contention that “blogs” are where facts go in and better facts come out, well, we like to start at the highest possible level of accuracy. We understand that we never have the whoe story when we publish and that the story can change when additional facts to come to life. This can lead to an admittedly more cautious approach to publishing than you see in “blogs,” where the assumption that the material is opinion protects the author against inaccuracies or even unwarranted criticism or allegations. It can always be protected as opinion and free speech. If we do that too often in our newspaper or on Internet sites owned and operated by our newspaper, we run the risk of losing credibility. I’m not saying this is the case with yours or any other specific blog, butI think in general there is as much a credibility problem with blogs as in mainstream journalism. Wouldn’t you agree?

That’s far too broad a statement to agree or disagree with. It’s like saying, “there is as much a credibility problem with people as there is with mainstream journalism.”

Some blogs have credibility problems. Some news outlets have credibility problems. In most cases, the respective bloggers and the news outlets brought said problems on themselves.

But the credibility problems rarely come merely from posting something early and mistaken, and then correcting it as new facts come to light. They come from publishing something wrong (sometimes with an obvious agenda), and then stonewalling about it (as CBS did for days, and really even to date), or denying obvious bias in their reporting or blogging. Once one gives up the pretense of “objective journalism,” and shows a willingness to quickly correct the record as prominently as it was originally reported (something that the MSM seems for some reason loathe to do, preferring instead to bury corrections to front-page stories deep in the food section), much or all can be forgiven.

In comments to this post, John Kelly of Florida Today writes:

As for Ken’s contention that “blogs” are where facts go in and better facts come out, well, we like to start at the highest possible level of accuracy. We understand that we never have the whoe story when we publish and that the story can change when additional facts to come to life. This can lead to an admittedly more cautious approach to publishing than you see in “blogs,” where the assumption that the material is opinion protects the author against inaccuracies or even unwarranted criticism or allegations. It can always be protected as opinion and free speech. If we do that too often in our newspaper or on Internet sites owned and operated by our newspaper, we run the risk of losing credibility. I’m not saying this is the case with yours or any other specific blog, butI think in general there is as much a credibility problem with blogs as in mainstream journalism. Wouldn’t you agree?

That’s far too broad a statement to agree or disagree with. It’s like saying, “there is as much a credibility problem with people as there is with mainstream journalism.”

Some blogs have credibility problems. Some news outlets have credibility problems. In most cases, the respective bloggers and the news outlets brought said problems on themselves.

But the credibility problems rarely come merely from posting something early and mistaken, and then correcting it as new facts come to light. They come from publishing something wrong (sometimes with an obvious agenda), and then stonewalling about it (as CBS did for days, and really even to date), or denying obvious bias in their reporting or blogging. Once one gives up the pretense of “objective journalism,” and shows a willingness to quickly correct the record as prominently as it was originally reported (something that the MSM seems for some reason loathe to do, preferring instead to bury corrections to front-page stories deep in the food section), much or all can be forgiven.

In comments to this post, John Kelly of Florida Today writes:

As for Ken’s contention that “blogs” are where facts go in and better facts come out, well, we like to start at the highest possible level of accuracy. We understand that we never have the whoe story when we publish and that the story can change when additional facts to come to life. This can lead to an admittedly more cautious approach to publishing than you see in “blogs,” where the assumption that the material is opinion protects the author against inaccuracies or even unwarranted criticism or allegations. It can always be protected as opinion and free speech. If we do that too often in our newspaper or on Internet sites owned and operated by our newspaper, we run the risk of losing credibility. I’m not saying this is the case with yours or any other specific blog, butI think in general there is as much a credibility problem with blogs as in mainstream journalism. Wouldn’t you agree?

That’s far too broad a statement to agree or disagree with. It’s like saying, “there is as much a credibility problem with people as there is with mainstream journalism.”

Some blogs have credibility problems. Some news outlets have credibility problems. In most cases, the respective bloggers and the news outlets brought said problems on themselves.

But the credibility problems rarely come merely from posting something early and mistaken, and then correcting it as new facts come to light. They come from publishing something wrong (sometimes with an obvious agenda), and then stonewalling about it (as CBS did for days, and really even to date), or denying obvious bias in their reporting or blogging. Once one gives up the pretense of “objective journalism,” and shows a willingness to quickly correct the record as prominently as it was originally reported (something that the MSM seems for some reason loathe to do, preferring instead to bury corrections to front-page stories deep in the food section), much or all can be forgiven.

I never fail to be amused by the insane notion that the press was out to get Bill Clinton during his presidency. In fact, they struggled mightily to avoid reporting on his and Hillary’s more egregious activities, and when forced to, usually helped the first couple by eagerly putting the best positive spin on them. As evidence of the former, Thomas Lipscomb asks why, with all of the reporting on private dick (multiple meanings to that word in this case) to the stars Anthony Pellicano, no one seems interested in mentioning the most interesting connection:

Numerous unbiased accounts of the Clintons have repeatedly stressed the importance of Hillary