Just out of curiosity, what are the structural and social factors which would in any way pressure news corporation publishers, editors, and their journalists and pundits toward decent journalism under basic principles?

Why would they? What would make them do so?

Because they are individually possessing of integrity? Fine. But if they aren't, or aren't extremely savvy in comprehending how their journalistic integrity is being compromised? What happens?

Because it's just the right thing to do, in general, or for the nation or the world? Okay, sure. Would be nice in a fantasy world.

Because the owners and employers demand it? Factually and demonstrably untrue.

Because their peers would harshly keep them on their toes for any failures? Cute. While some of their peers might, what's to make any of the institutions (and their employees) care?

Because the readers and listeners and viewers insist upon it? Well, occasionally they might, but until their voices are highly organized, their frustrations will count far less than the advertisers who typically provide most of the funding for the enterprise.

I'm sorry, I just don't see any sign of an incentive and disincentive structure which may lead to qualitative changes, thus allowing people like Glenn to be able to relax at any point in the future.

Until something changes in the structural or incentive / disincentive environment, it will be necessary to keep having (and supporting) alternative writers & researchers like Glenn, in the same way that the alternative medias of the 1920s and 1930s and 1960s and 1980s arose to demand and present coverage which the 'mainstream' was ignoring.

It would be better if somehow the current wave of alternative journalism & commentary began to figure out how to pool their resources to offer an even more systematic and institutionalized alternative (and challenge) to the corporate-dominated news producers, but that may still be a long way off.

It's hard enough for prominent journalists to do all these things like meet with publishers, lunch with inside sources, dine with politicians, read e-mails... They got a TON of stuff to do.

It's not fair for Glenn to also demand that people who work for the New York Times do actual journalism, you know, like, reporting stuff when you check the information and verify stuff?

The New York Times, after all, is a tiny, struggling, barely funded multi-billion dollar publication.

Maybe you and your fancy pants big shot "bloggers" with your champagne-fueled Bentleys might actually afford the time to read & think about stuff, but it's just not fair to demand that of the poor & beleaguered Times.

It cannot be logically true that (a) all of our opponents in Iraq are al Qaeda and (b) Iran is a major sponsor of our enemies in Iraq.

Aha!! Here you've given away the game.

You see, maybe it can hardly be logically true, but it can be true illogically. And Republicans have no trouble believing in up to 10 illogical things before breakfast, and by lunch appearing on up to 10 TV and radio shows furthering their now-accepted illogics.

It's nice to know that right wingers, who believed their ancient god Reagan when he said, "boogety-boogety, Nicaragua's only 2 days drive from Harlingen, Texas," and suddenly they were afraid that Juan Q. Sandinista was about to hop in a truck, drive through Mexico, and invade Texas, still pee their pants from fear that Nicaragua might have had a government that Ronald Reagan didn't choose for them.

Oops, they do now though. Looks like Daniel Ortega outlived Ronald Reagan, and for better effect.

Of course, Reagan and his cabinet should have been tried for directly facilitating actual genocide in Guatemala, but, ha, ha, ha, yeah, like any establishment types care how many brown people get killed by U.S. hawks. Har har.

Back in the good old days of quality journalism when the NYT et al were cheerleading every attempt to bomb and subvert mainly brown people worldwide because somewhere in some dimension there was said to be a Russian or Chinese or Cuban communist nearby, in spirit if not in actual presence, you often could actually carefully read reports from on the ground which contradicted the hawkish ravings of the editorial board and publishers.

Just because there was a Bircher or World Anti-Communist League nut (usually highly connected to the government or establishment figures) screaming that the NYT or WP was 'in' on the communist conspiracy just because on some days they printed actual stories instead of filling up column inches with cartoon happy faces doesn't mean that the news companies really were producing quality coverage, just that it was less propagandistic than the murderous hawk minions were demanding.

The demand for journalism to rise from its current levels of abject obedience to its previous levels of subservience and propaganda is not enough; at this day and age, we need to be mature enough, brave enough, and strong enough to demand that the news producers stop asking us to consume shoddy work and propagandistic product and to actually produce a news product worth reading, listening to, or watching.