I am always puzzled by reporters' justification of their actions by saying "both sides criticize me, so I must be doing something right." I am a referee in my daughter's soccer league. Usually when both sides are critical, I take it as an indication that I've done my job poorly, not well.

There will always be those who criticize good refereeing. Just as in politics, there are those who criticize simply because they are blind to their own side's faults. Then, there are those who criticize because they are losing and want someone to blame. Finally, there are those who criticize with the conscious intent of "gaming" the referee in order to get more favorable calls. In all of those cases, changing calls in order to make the other side complain as well only makes the officiating worse, not better.

The key is to distinguish valid criticism from whining or manipulating. That takes some self-awareness and a thick skin. These are virtues that many reporters appear to lack. Certainly, on the basis of his response, John King appears to lack both.

In fact, that's where they found him: out standing in his field.

That's a real twofer you've got there, Glenn: King and now the Professor, self-described "professionals" in the exalted journamalism biz, who in the face of a substantive argument can't muster anything but sneers, taunts, and catty innuendo straight out of a junior high cheerleaders' pajama party.

Here's a hint, Professor Tim Smith: You're not helping your cause. If I had a kid in your class, I'd be demanding my money back.

Because it's not just about what we saw and heard on CNN, it's about what we didn't see and hear. It's like the silences in Pinter, right?

Izzy Stone was the first to articulate the dangers of what Glen has dissected as the "Village" and why residents of it are incapable of fact-reporting or truth-telling.

"It's just wonderful to be a pariah. I really owe my success to being a pariah.

It is so good not to be invited to respectable dinner parties. People used to say to me, 'Izzy, why don't you go down and see the Secretary of State and put him straight.' Well, you know, you're not supposed to see the Secretary of State. He won't pay any attention to you anyway. He'll hold your hand, he'll commit you morally for listening.

To be a pariah is to be left alone to see things your own way, as truthfully as you can. Not because you're brighter than anybody else is -- or your own truth so valuable. But because, like a painter or a writer or an artist, all you have to contribute is the purification of your own vision, and add that to the sum total of other visions.

To be regarded as nonrespectable, to be a pariah, to be an outsider, this is really the way to do it. To sit in your tub and not want anything. As soon as you want something, they've got you!"

--I.F. Stone

the Army meds were not prepared for the battle injuries we see today, and the VA will be playing catch-up for years.

We are discharging vets and providing no support services for mental health, no "decompression zones" for the transition to "peaceful" civilian life. We are perpetrators by proxy of a startling continuum of abuse to our own soldiers and to their friends, families, co-workers, neighbors.

hi ...

you are right, bystander. i don't think we're arguing your point, which i take as a call for individual professionalism. you also state that this straightforward chrage is, in fact, very difficult.

my point is, as you wrote, to evoke compassion for those of us who fight "systems." i don't think john king is one of those ... and as a result he is being rewarded with a tv news salary. his letter to glenn is so defensive, because glenn is calling his fraud a fraud.

we agree, i imagine, with all this.

my point is this ... calling a fraud a fruad is one way to make change. if the person exposing the other, in this case glenn, calls out the frauds in an inflamatory way (i'm not saying glenn did, but many commenters here are quick to name call) ... that ADDS to the system problem ... the opposite of an assumed intention to make change. glenn is making the point that reporters can be too coddling. sometimes they are. sometimes they are the opposite. the system problem is this: we, as a country, are responsible for creating the environment where confrontational/sensational news dominates, so inflammatory confrontation adds to this problem. fanning the fire only makes it worse. we're all responsible. i am inviting commenters to not only show empathy to "reporters" in general, but also reflect on how their specific actions of inflamed outrage ADDS to the news/reporting problem. outrage is justified sometimes ... but if we are asking these reporters to have balls and change the systems that they operate in, shouldn't we do the same?

But his response raises a point that your reply dodges: what reporting did you do?

In what way is that a dodge? The real dodge is the suggestion that it matters. What does that have to do with anything?

As other commenters have mentioned, this comes up in sports reporting ALL THE TIME: A sports reporter questions a sports figure; the sports figure, accustomed to deference, is surprised. Sports figure resorts to saying, "well, you wouldn't understand it because YOU NEVER LACED 'EM UP."

No wonder some of the better journalists have roots in sports. They've sniffed out this BS before.

Keep doin' whatcha do, Glenn.

Someone wrote (I'm sorry I can't find the post again to credit its author):

"I also love the 'both sides criticize me, which proves I'm credible' argument. Once again, the same false equivalency that dominates their reporting comes into play. Being criticized by freepers because you didn't ask Hillary why, as a lesbian, she had an affair with Vince Foster before murdering him is not the same as being criticized on the substance of your reporting because you fail to ask any real questions of a candidate you practically admit to drooling over.

"And even if he were right, and the rest of the interview were better, that wouldn't justify the verbal blow-job he gave McCain at the end."

Damn! I am definitely gettin' my money's worth here today!

You know, on reflection, though, it is curious why a lesbo would murder her male lover like that. Could it have been so Foster couldn't tell anyone she had gone over to the dark side, however tentatively or experimentally? Or could it have been that after all her heady draughts of sapphic nectar, she found him so disappointing in the sack that she killed him just to put him out of his Y-chromosome misery?

I just wish some indefatigable journalistic sleuth extraordinaire like John King would bring to bear his mighty investigative and deductive powers on this question of Hillary's motive in killing Foster, notwithstanding how important and time-consuming it admittedly is to monitor and periodically relieve the pressure on Straight Talk's prostate.

KR