my point is that many "good" reporters ... those that wish to follow ethical guidelines, those that wish to do their jobs well (their jobs being serving the public good by investigating facts in an unbiased way and disclosing them for readers to form an opinion) ... these good reporters are a dying breed. you are both right, especially baldie, with asking "so what?" but ... it strikes me we (as a country) already have enough callousness and lack of sympathy. i don't encourage emotions and understanding to take anyone off the hook for being a sham ... but i think there are larger forces at play.

complicating this is the notion of "what s reporting" and "who is a reporter?" i've asked glenn to respond to this, and haven't seen him do it. most "reporters" on tv are really talk show hosts or opinion pundits. they do not "report." the talk show thing ... sometimes with near jerry springer-like fights ... seems to grow ratings. vile opinion making ... the more extreme, seemingly the better ... seem to drive ratings. is this the fault of the "reporters"? or the consuming public? if the consuming public seems to love fights ... how does glenn's confrontational style actually add to this problem? how do our concerned comments, when they turn personal or mean, add to this?

this is the only thing i've ever seen on reporters "ethics" and it is voluntary, i read:

http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

Bravo--do it more often--his point that the portion shown was part of bigger interview is irrelevent--it is what the viewing audience sees--these so called journalist think they are kingmakers---somein media matters did that to Tim Russert--I like this; maybe we could have a channel which acts like a Truth Squad for these pompous assholes

Do you video of the broadcast from cnn or youtube to link to?

Sanctimonious Joe Lieber-sheisse (Democratic Independent) was campaigning for McCain (Republica) in Michigan yesterday. He lent his voice to a slurry of robo-calls. When can we call Lieberman what he is? A sanctimonious turncoat.

Is it truly time for a 100 year war in the middle of the middle east when we know that what pissed off Al Queda in the first place was our air base in the kingdom? Joe and McCain forget there were no weapons of WMD in Iraq, Iraq did not have anything to do with 9/11, we are there on fraudulent intellignce. Why stay a moment longer than we need to?

Well, it seems Gandhi was right. Guess they're finished ignoring you; when they're done attacking you, break out the champagne.

There is, though, in all his jugheaded arrogance, a note of real panic - don't you think? King's arch dismissiveness is a little too shrill. Maybe his days as a lickspittle pimp for the Beltway elite are numbered... and maybe he senses it.

Maybe they all do...

If Mr. King were capable of introspection, he would identify his outrage as false, and find the source of his anger to be his fear that Glenn has caught him out.

Were Mr. King a reporter, he would know that Glenn was a lawyer of repute in the toughest legal town in America. If he were computer literate, he could have ascertained Glenn's standing in the blogosphere in about ten minutes, allowing time for searching the spectrum to left and right.

His semi-literate response matches his faux outrage and sends the message that communications with Glenn, and by extension, the rest of the lefty blogosphere, don't deserve the time needed to write professionally. Since that's his trade, it says far more about his professsional "substandards" - the subject of Glenn's critique - than it does about Glenn's.

King seems to have caught Dowd Syndrome. Most prevalent on the editorial pages of the Times and Journal and among those who follow Fox Noise, it's a neurotic fear of web driven criticism, and is usually associated with those whose careers and paychecks amply demonstrate the Peter Principle.

"Fired"

-- macgupta

Yes, I noticed that, too. Does CNN care about PR? Are they not aware that such tripe as what their employee, John King, publicly aired is directly connected to their reputation? Do they care? Is the lock on insider, in-crowdism so much the game that ALL of us who aren't literally in the club are outsiders and don't matter?

Your counter arguments were almost prose. My greatest hope is that someone like you - with your knowledge of the constitution- would interview Ron Paul. Without affection, baited questions, flattery or slant. Dare I dream?

PS. My most amazing discovery when reading King's response was his lack of knowledge about the use of spell check.

John King asked questions about the surge, how McCain had to prove his conservative 'credentials' in SC, about his adopted daughter Bridget and the smear of 2000 (cleverly concealing the author of that smear, btw), and his chances for winning SC this time. In his response to you, however, that suddenly becomes, "The interview was mainly to get a couple of questions to him on his thoughts on the role of government when the economy is teetering on the edge of recession, in conjunction with similar questions being put to several of the other candidates." None of those questions had anything at all to do with what he says was the purpose of the interview. So did his editor screw him, or was he a fawning nincompoop? If his interview was twisted by management, he could say that. The fact that he didn't, and the nature of his response, says a lot. Unfortunately for King, it doesn't say anything good about him.

I was a reporter for three different newspapers, and I can say that I blew some interviews. But I always freely admitted it later. I would look at my performance and resolve to correct those errors. That way my work kept improving.

King seems to think that he did nothing wrong and his interview was awesome. An honest journalist would have just said that reading the transcript made him cringe and he regrets tossing McCain those softballs.

But he didn't.

Maybe he doesn't recognize the error, or he feels so vulnerable he's unable to admit a failure.

Great column Glenn. Keep up the good work.