Branfman has bravely exposed the rotten core of modern American political journalism. Tim Russert's continual appeal to "big Russ" after his chummy chats with Bush cronies makes me want to reach for the sick bag. When Woodward's "Bush at War" was released I couldn't believe that the journalistic establishment were letting this one fly by. A "Boys Own" account of what is surely the most deceptive administration in modern american history, Woodward was positively swooning over the aura of power in the Oval Office. It was clear in the writing that he had been chosen by Bush handlers to do a desperately needed propaganda piece. Not since Monica Lewinsky has anyone seemed as transfixed by the power of the Presidency as Bob Woodward.

That Woodward, Novak, Russert et al will make Faustian bargains should not be surprising. They are not the first, they will not be the last. What is worse is that they are so rarely called on it. I remember reading reviews hailing Woodward's fearless accounting of the rigours of leading a nation at war. He did nothing of the sort. Where were the "second tier" journalists calling it out for what it was-obscene propaganda. Perhaps because I am too young to be struck by the Watergate aura, perhaps it is because I am a foreigner but I just can't believe that there were so few American journalists willing to attack such an icon. Branfman may be able to tell me if it is as I suspect; no editor would have let such criticism pass his desk. It is not just reporters in DC that have played shamefully, the entire establishment seems be be as in thrall of journalistic star power as the nation is of "American Idol."

I"m a civilian now but was quite involved in in politics and law and am well known in my area no where near a national level.Your article is fascinating reading and enlightening re: Koppel.

Your points are well taken in regard the media. More importantly however you hit a universal chord regarding being the best at what one does.You have to get along to get to the top except in rare situations.Sports and the arts come to mind. In most other jobs politics is a necessity.

That having been said politics is the art of deception. The best are self effacing.Almost all are hypocrites.Koppel of course was not your friend. A real friend plays the game but doesn't bull s-it his friends. Of course I only have in a long life 3 friends but it took 2/3 of my adult life to come to that conclusion and as Alcee Hastings, who you may know said "the only person in life you can trust is your mama and she may be jiving you too"

Well done, Eddie Kay

Branfman got me excited when he wrote that Koppel symbolizes "the institutional and structural corruption of an American media that has chosen to define "news" primarily as the information it receives from American officials."

I've been waiting ten years to hear these words. Since the days when Clinton was still president and Barry Mc Caffrey was his Drug Czar.

Here's an anecdote from those days. I've been mad about this for a long time. It's not Iraq, but it's the kind of behavior that helped lead us into Iraq.

Around 1995, a study was released by the DOT on auto fatalities and substance abuse. Among other things, the study concluded that, statistically speaking, drivers with marijuana in their bloodstream (and no alcohol or other drugs) had a slightly lower risk of causing highway fatalities than sober drivers. A controversial assertion, but that was what the number crunchers crunched.

Both the Bush I and Clinton administrations asked the DOT researchers to alter or omit this conclusion, but these professionals stood their ground without flinching. The report was already several years late thanks to these shenanigans strecthing between two administrations -- so the report was released as written, much to the dismay of the Clinton White House.

How did this get reported in the press?

Barry McCaffrey held special meetings with journalists and told them this shocking report concluded that marijuana was the second biggest danger on the highway next to alcohol.

Did any of the journalists who reported these meetings with McCaffrey bother to look up the actual report and read it and compare McCaffrey's claims with the actual report?

NOT ONE FRIGGING "JOURNALIST" who reported this story checked the actual report. They all reported the story exactly as McCaffrey explained it to them.

People at Salon will now say -- "Go away, you dumb pothead. What does your self-absorbed fascination with reefer madness have to to with Iraq?"

If Clinton could lie so easily about a highway safety report and put the whole nation into a false frenzy about stoned drivers -- OF COURSE Bush was going to find it easy to do the same thing with Saddam and the fears of WMDs.

This crisis in journalism we're feeling now is not something new brought upon us by the ascendancy of the neo-right. This is bad behavior that the left was overlooking and tolerating and even actively enabling under Clinton.

I've seen at least ten years of this kind of pandering and lying and laziness and refusal to stand up to government officials and refusal to check facts on a wide variety of stories.

People have been tricked this way into investing in wars that have done a lot of harm to the country and to the world.

This is not a new problem, it's an ongoing problem, and something needs to be done to put it right.

The public can't make good decisions if journalists are too lazy or self-interested to do the work and make the sacrifices necessary to give the public accurate information.

Sorry to disagree, but I found this article utterly repellent. I also found it all to similar to other Salon features that have based grand generalizations on nothing but weak personal anecdotes. As I understand it--from this article--Mr. Branfman met and spent a week with Mr. Koppel 35 years ago, subsequently had lunch with him at which he repeatedly insulted two of Mr. Koppel's friends, and then, after 30 years, was peeved because Mr. Koppel refused to devote a program to one of Mr. Branfman's pet projects. According to the article, that is the sum total of Mr. Branfman's relationship with Mr. Koppel. I know my dry cleaner better than that. And I wouldn't begin to feel qualified to write an article about Henry Huang (said dry cleaner), much less to piss on him in the national press.

The root of Mr. Branfman's dissatisfaction with Mr. Koppel appears to lie in personal disappointment: He wanted Mr. Koppel to share his political views and, most particularly, his belief that Mr. Kissinger was at very best one of Satan's outriders. How could Mr. Koppel, that "decent man" (and rarely has such a generally genuine accolade been used to confer such thin praise) consider Kissinger a friend? Well, clearly, the only answer is that Mr. Koppel had himself joined the dark side, even if only on the margins. The notion that Mr. Koppel might have personal reasons for regarding Mr. Kissinger as a friend--maybe Kissinger saved Koppel's drowning child, maybe he wrote a particularly moving letter of sympathy when Koppel's mother died, maybe he told the best dirty jokes inside the Beltway--is completely disregarded. In Mr. Branfman's world, apparently, you're either part of the solution or part of the problem, and that goes for every aspect of your personal life.

That kind of absolutist, "Anyone who disagrees with me is part of the axis of evil" thinking is exactly what I loathe most about today's right wing, and I loathe it even more when it comes from the left. When coupled with the self-absorption that regards scanty personal experience as a substitute for actual reporting and analysis, it is the death-knell of responsible journalism--fully as destructive as the kind of access-buying that Mr. Branfman (almost) correctly condemns, though without any credible back-up.

A word about that access-buying. Some journalists practice investigative journalism, which demands that the journalist function as an outsider to the people or situations that he/she is investigating. This can be both honorable and productive, but it exacts an enormous emotional toll, because--as with spies--the journalist must live much of his/her life as a lie. More importantly, it's not the only kind of journalism. There is an equally honorable, and equally productive branch that involves reporting without pretense, conducting interviews without pretending to befriend the person being interviewed. A fair amount of the time, you don't have to go through their garbage: They'll incriminate themselves, and right in front of your not-hidden TV cameras.

That's the kind of journalism that, at least on "Nightline," Mr. Koppel has always practiced, and one of the side-effects of this kind of work is that, from time to time, you find yourself liking the people you're interviewing. You may not agree with all their beliefs, you may be revolted by the fact that they don't always recycle their milk cartons, but you enjoy their company, and they enjoy yours. That's being human. Clearly, that kind of behavior isn't up to Mr. Branfman's high standards, but then, his form of "journalism" doesn't begin to meet mine.