PBS hatchet job II

An after thought about last night's Bill Moyer report.

The show was critical of the media's chumminess with government officials. I couldn't agree more with that premise.

In the old days of Major League Baseball, the beat writers were paid by the baseball teams. Over time, papers decided that there was inherent conflict of interest for writers to be paid by the teams.

But it is really no different today. Sure the teams no longer pay the writers but in order to be able to get the good stories, writers, too often, chum it up with the players/managers/owner and even allow themselves to be used by these people to leak information the player/managers /owner wants, all in the pretense of getting closer to the "big story".

The writers ultimately become too close to the teams and never want to write anything that may upset the apple cart (thus they get shut out of any information) so we, the media consumer, get watered down puff pieces passed by "journalists" as news.

It's no different for DC insiders. The whole beltway is nothing but a citizenry of pimps and whores. All too often, big media is positioned to "whore" the information that people in the know want them to deliver.

It was clear from the report last night that Judith Miller, formerly, of the NY Times and "Scootergate", was just such a tool for the administration to get out the information they wanted.

The fact of the matter is, the days of true Watergate style reporting are over and they have been for some time. None of the DC insiders want to do anything that jeopardizes their invitation to the next National Press Core function and none want to do anything to destroy their sources.

As a result, the DC bureaucrats, will keep using their classified knowledge and their pimp/whore relationship with the media to advance the cause or destroy the cause of our elected officials; hence the whole Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame affair.

So when I hear a "journalist" like Dan Rather rip the accuracy of blogger information, I have to laugh.

What's the frequency Kenneth?