Rick Perlstein: Bloggers vs. Heathers
Rick Perlstein watches a panel in which Richard Wolffe and David Schuster further undermine their shattered reputations as reporters--and don't seem to realize it:
Bloggers and Heathers go 15 Rounds | Campaign for America's Future: Richard Wolffe of Newsweek... insists [that Newsweek] really is fair and balanced: it tells the truth, and speaks that truth to power.... Wolffe and David Schuster of MSNBC both defended Chris Matthews, criticized... for trivializing political coverage by, for example, his attention to Fred Thompson's musky, manly smell.
[Matthews] "cares more about politics--about real nitty-gritty politics--than anyone in Washington," Schuster said. He's "the reason" there was a debate in Washington on torture - a scary idea, if you think about it. It's not exactly something on which reporters should have to play follow the leader....
Someone asked the Washington reporters on the panel whether the sense in their newsrooms was that, as the International Atomic Energy Agency maintains, that Iran is nowhere close to having nuclear weapons, and may in fact not even be attempting to get nuclear waeapons. Or did their newsrooms trust the administration, which makes the opposite claim? Schuster affirmed that there was a "great deal of skepticism among reporters" on the administration's Iran claims. He puffed up a little with pride, and said that's why you don't see many reports on Iran these days: because they've evaluated the administration's claims and found them wanting - undeserving of attention.
[Dan] Froomkin got the last word He said: that's precisely the point. You don't respond to administration lies about Iran by not running Iran stories. You respond to it by doing stories - about adminstration lies about Iran...
