"I’m not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody that has 9 percent approval ratings."
Thank you, Harry Reid, for finally stating the obvious. The attitude of the entire country now should be to afford no credibility to anything these liars say. Every time I listen to the news and hear some new comment or accusation coming from Bush or Cheney, I wonder why it’s even reported as if it’s serious news, as if anything they say is an honest man’s opinion, as if at this point what they say means something. It’s no longer news because nothing these people say can be believed. The news anchors should report on administration statements only with air quotes and a tone of supercilious irony.
Like that’s going to happen. Irony will be an impossibility for the MSM so long as they are incapable of recognizing how complicit they are with the people in power they report on. The Jessica Lynch/Pat Tillman business brings that fact into a dramatically stark light. By way of Greenwald, here’s WaPo’s Vernon Loeb’s understanding of how he was manipulated by his government sources to publish the breathless reprort of Lynch’s rescue even though he knew it was completely and utterly a fabrication:
Vernon Loeb, who wrote the story with another reporter, Susan Schmidt, calls their sourcing solid. He concedes, however, that the tale could have benefited from stronger and more prominent caveats about the sketchiness of intelligence reports. "My lesson learned is I should have been more cautious in the way I wrote this story," he says. "But, having said that, I would have written the story anyway." . . . .
But he and Post Managing Editor Steve Coll say they have no reason to doubt that their April 3 story accurately reflected the information contained in those reports–even if the reports had inaccuracies. "We had multiple sources because multiple people were reading the same intelligence report," Coll says.
Are they serious? They’d publish the story anyway?! Have they no perspective on themselves. Are they too blinded by their own sense of eminence to acknowledge that they were conned?
Both Greenwald and Somerby should be read this week if for some reason you still think our press cares more about the truth than about its perqs. Also watch Moyer tonight.
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