Herewith a spontaneous free-association exercise I just conducted-- a very rough, sketchy list of attributes amounting to a caricature of the "old-fashioned" reporter versus the corporate media aristocracy. I well understand that these straw-sketches are over-simplified. With that disclaimer...

Archaeo-journalist: high-school graduate (college OK, not mandatory); underpaid; unimportant; earns "byline" by merit (still underpaid); outsider; skeptic; cynic; aggressive; prefers to remain detached from, and adversarial to the powerful elite (distrusts power)

Neo-journalist: college/j-school graduate; relatively well-paid corporate employee; (self)important; seeks iconic celebrity status; insider; credulous; sycophantic; collusive; mingles with, and aspires to parity with the powerful elite (admires power)

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It seems to me that there is a class component that accounts for the Fourth Estate's transition from the ostensible friend of the common man to the handmaidens of the powerful. The wealthy and powerful have moved into the Fourth Estate lock, stock, and barrel, and the media are living in the slave quarters out back.

However, the Upstairs/Downstairs duality is semi-permeable, such that the Upstairs servants who do their masters' bidding well enough eventually get to sit at the table and join them as equals, or at least equivalents.

I'm just thinking of icons like I.F. Stone, George Seldes, Ida Tarbell-- Helen Thomas-- and even classic fictional reporters like Eddie Willis (Humphrey Bogart) in "The Harder They Fall". This group wasn't impressed, thrilled, and awed by the elite and powerful they covered, and they didn't pursue a career track for the sake of becoming fabulously wealthy and owning homes cheek by jowl with the persons they covered. Nor did they cultivate status, like the modern Beltway Insiders, and take obvious pleasure in clubbiness with the movers & shakers they cover.

This isn't true of the reporters, pundits, and journalists with whom Glenn so frequently takes issue. The adversarial ethos has become "quaint", rather like the Geneva Conventions. Instead, the corporatized and hyper-professionalized journalists have gone "upscale"; as this article so vividly demonstrates, they by and large practice a camaraderie with their fellow aristocrats. They're accorded status as experts as a function of the contacts and sources they develop, not because of sheer independent investigatory skill and determination.

They are united by a common aristocratic class, and to a more or less conscious degree scorn or despise the quaint criticism that this impedes and vitiates their capacity to probe into, report on, and challenge controversial, suspicious, or blatantly wrongful actions by persons of power and influence, aka The Establishment.

I loved the novel "Catch-22" from the first time I read it as a teenager; it was hard to follow then, and some of it went over my head, but I instantly connected with, and admired, the perfect surrealistic satire of the core "Catch-22" concept.

But during the present century, I came to see that it wasn't "surrealistic" at all. Or perhaps I should say that reality transmogrified into a state indistinguishable from the seemingly surrealistic scenes.

Glenn's report about the SWAT goons' reluctance to even show a warrant, and the authorities' refusal to make the warrants public, demonstrates an eerie concordance:

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The protagonist, "anti-hero" Yossarian visits a former brothel from which military police have arrested or chased away all the prostitutes, and wantonly trashed the premises for good measure. Yossarian asks why.

"No reason," wailed the old woman. "No reason."

"What right did they have?"

"Catch-22. [...] Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing. [...] What does it mean, Catch-22? What is Catch-22?"

"Didn't they show it to you?" Yossarian demanded, stamping about in anger and distress. "Didn't you even make them read it?"

"They don't have to show us Catch-22," the old woman answered. "The law says they don't have to."

"What law says they don't have to?"

"Catch-22." [...]

Yossarian [...] strode out of the apartment, cursing Catch-22 vehemently as he descended the stairs, even though he knew there was no such thing. Catch-22 did not exist, he was positive of that, but it made no difference. What did matter was that everyone thought it existed, and that was much worse, for there was no object or text to ridicule or refute [...].

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I know that you're a sensible and circumspect fellow, Glenn-- but you and Jane be careful, hear?

If people weren't doing something wrong in the first place, the nice policemen wouldn't be arresting them!

There's somethin' happenin' here

What it is ain't exactly clear

There's a man with a gun over there

Tellin' me I got to beware

(I think it's time we)

Stop, children, what's that sound?

Everybody look what's goin' down

There's battle lines bein' drawn

Nobody's right if everybody's wrong

Young people speakin' their minds

Gettin' so much resistance from behind

(It's time we)

Stop, hey, what's that sound?

Everybody look what's goin' down.

[...]

-- Buffalo Springfield [Stephen Stills, 1967]