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Pick up a TIME magazine from the late 1960s, and it's easy to figure out that for a sizable amount of "journalists," their work has always been no more than transcribing the common wisdom of those in power at the time. In those old articles, progress is being made in Vietnam, our military is invincible, and US motives are pure.
Joe Kline and friends follow in this journalistic tradition; to them, research is for obsessive "investigative journalists." Being a plain journalist just means a comfy career in the chattering class, safe in New York or DC -- the perfect vantage points to discover what Real Americans think.
All Kline has to do is think in his head that the U.S. was "abiding by the spirit of the Geneva Conventions" and he makes it so. That's not writing; that's typing.
