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I meet many of the national journalists at Harvard's Shorenstein Center and my considered opinion is that they don't think they have done anything wrong, that they can't do anything wrong, that they never do anything really, you know, wrong.
A little while ago, Adam Nagourney was at Harvard and I told him that his work has taught me that I cannot trust him and asked whether that matters to him, and if it did, what was he going to do about it. His response was "Oh, you mean like that Judy Miller thing?" To him, it was one isolated and rare instance, a mere peccadillo, as they say. (I don't trust Mr Nagourney because I've been at a event that he covered and saw how he badly he missed the story. I've also previously asked him about torture and experienced how he weaseled away from any substantive answer. Twice.)
On Monday, April 9, Mark Halperin was at the Shorenstein. He complained about how badly the media is being treated in the (left) blogosphere. They are being insulted and attacked ad hominem by unqualified bloggers who HAVE NO RIGHT! For Halperin, the public discourse runs from Ann Coulter to Michael Moore, these are the examplars he specifically mentioned. He spoke about how the press should be consistent, accurate, and contextual and his words echoed those I've read many times on atrios and dkos and here, among other places. When I mentioned that, he got pissed. He seems to hate Kos but despises Sommersby of the dailyhowler, as I discovered when I mentioned his name.
Do national journalists agree with Gary Kamiya? No. Most of them wouldn't even bother to read his critique. I doubt there is even a handful of those who deign to read Kamiya who would even bother to consider the possibility that what they reported and how they reported it had anything to do with the disastrous reign of W.
