Gordon,

Thank you for the criticism, which usefully points out part of my position which I didn't make very clear. Let me explain myself a little further. Against my faulting Greenwald's logic, you argue that:

One must consider context. It's pretty clear to me this refers solely to some journalists who respond to criticisms.

It all hinges on what we mean by "context." Just to have some of that context right in front of us, I'll post my quote of Greenwald again:

I pointed out that this was not the first time [Mr. King] appeared to be reverent of John McCain... Most of this speaks for itself, but it's worth noting how often journalists' responses to criticisms contain so many of the same elements which King's email contains. They always want you to know that they never read what you write and that you're an Unserious, biased, partisan amateur...

My problem with this column is confined to the space between two sentences. Up until the sentence after Greenwald complains about "...how often journalists...", he's clearly talking about the occasional (if still too frequent) bad behavior of some journalists. But notice the next sentence, which begins, "They always...." In that little space, we go from "...how often journalists..." (some journalists sometimes) to "they always..." (all journalists always--the only reasonable antecedent for the pronoun "they" being the unqualified "journalists").

The leap isn't justified by anything Greenwald includes in the column. A new reader, unfamiliar with Greenwald's work and reputation, isn't going to start reading about how "they always" this and "they always" that, and think, "Greenwald just means means some journalists some of the time. I can tell because he talked about 'how often journalists' behaved this way." There's only one group of people who can make the leap--and that's regular Greenwald readers, like you and me, who can place Greenwald's rant in the larger context of his work.

In short, Greenwald may have meant that King was only one example of an insidious but not universal pattern of behavior, but he didn't say that. Nor did he imply it. What he did was rely on his readers to "catch his drift." This column doesn't read like a piece of journalism or honest criticism. It reads like propaganda.

I have always understood Greenwald to be arguing that each piece of journalism needs to stand on its own two feet, without reference to the "secret, concealed information" and/ or the author's entire oeuvre. Indeed, one of Greenwald's problems with King's McCain interview is that a reasonable person, viewing only that interview, would be unable to winnow any useful information from the chaff. When King claims that one needs to see "the right context" in order to understand his piece, Greenwald calls bullshit. And rightly so. Because that isn't how people consume news.

People consume news in bits and bites from here and there, from a variety of sources. Every piece either contains its own context (if long enough) or provides clues as to how to contextualize it--what we call "framing" or, more pejoratively, "spin." In other words, if it looks and feels like propaganda, and provides no explicit context to help the reader situate its content, then it will function exactly like propaganda (no matter how true it is) because people will treat it like propaganda. Which means that for all intents and purposes, it is propaganda.

To be clear: insofar as Greenwald advocates a free and vigorous US press, I support him entirely. And I frankly have few scruples about using propaganda to achieve that same goal. I believe, however, firstly, that as a strategy for nurturing a free and vigorous US press, Greenwald's strategy of rigorous, hard-nosed, argumentatively sound criticism will prove far effective in both the short and long term than propaganda. And secondly, I think that Greenwald has none of the strengths of a good propagandist--he's overbearing, technical, and tediously indefatigable. But all of those are great strengths in a media critic. Therefore let him be a media critic, not a propagandist.

Which means that nothing he publishes within this column should look or feel like propaganda. It undercuts his credibility by making him look like one of the John Kings of the world. I am not faulting his logic to be persnickety. I am faulting it because Greenwald's whole fight is essentially against the thoughtless logical fallacies of puerile journalists. I do not want him to become his own worst enemy.

then why did he take the time to respond?

And hear, hear to whomever said King was acting like a child.

His reporting is often anemic (in order to maintain his access, I guess) and usually just parrots Administration or Party Lines (I sometimes wonder why he doesn't save himself the time and just report, "Please go watch CSPAN,"). While he's usually not controversial and so was clearly not prepared to hear his audience's reaction, it was clearly below the belt to suggest that you have no background to stand on.

(Altho some of what he said about you not being a journalist sounded a lot like your comments about conservative Ed Morrissey not being a lawyer.)

I guess I would hope that a professional like King would first, respecting your background, attempt to find some common ground. How sad that in the professional class, one still finds grade school behavior.

However, whinging about his response might not be so mature, either...

Keep up the good work Glenn. John King just displayed exactly why he is no more than a talking head and why major media misses nearly every opportunity it has to get some substance into it.

Unfortunately the problem is pervasive in the news industry and most likely not directly King's fault. If John starts asking hard questions, well there is probably another drooling sycophant waiting to step up and take his place at the altar of McCain. So to keep his paycheck and stay on TV he throws all the softballs his bosses tell him to. Wouldn't want some other news outlet or reporter in there.

Sure it probably rankles him a bit to be that guy which is why he launched an impotent salvo at you for pointing out how deficient he is as a reporter, but hey it pays the bills, so he'll keep on doing it!