I wanted to second that, and also to throw in that it may not have much to do with actual ethics. It is as you say, a business model, or to be more precise "branding". A smaller conglomerate like McClatchy needs to find a niche market that will cut through the clutter of the larger national papers--whereas the branding for the NYT, WP and LA Times is "insiderism", McClatchy presents itself as a principled outsider. McClatchy's boutique journalism raises its profile, and creates a buzz around a very unremarkable newspaper empire composed of small town local crap-rags.

That's in stark contrast to what you see in the pages of the those local papers, where most of the news is made up of wire reports and is fixated on sensational local stories and entertainment gossip. I think its an interesting development in the generally cowardly world of journo-business and harkens back to an earlier time when corporations that owned media outlets ran them in a more principled way and at a loss as a prestige-generating device. That's IMHO, anyway.

Today is the tenth anniversary of the student uprising in Iran. There was a call for 18 Tir protests. Nico Pitney is documenting a lot of protest going on.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/09/iran-uprising-blogging-th_n_228454.html

'The role of the "journalist" is not to repeat it or merely report that the government claims it, but instead, to investigate it with skepticism to determine whether it is true, and then report if it isn't. "..Glenn

Yes,when investigating the reporter must also be able to verify that what he has uncovered is the truth, and not report his own OPINION of the truth. Problem is when information is classified for national security it's harder to obtain the truth, then their is the matter of who's truth it is. It's rather a Catch 22 situation. I do think that news papers lack the staff of investigative reporting compared to past decades, and of course this requires developing relationships,something some reporters seem to ignore.

I find many of the claims reported here and in this letter section that all detainees where picked up in their own countries to be over simplification of the truth. Some were an some were no. (i.e. Many detainees were picked up in in Afghanistan, but it was NOT their own country.) You use examples of detainees who have been released, and of course they were released because it was determined they could be released safely, and there were countries willing to take them. However what proof do you have that all the other detainees are safe to release, and there are countries willing to take them, or they will be safe in their own countries.

You continue to ignore, the current administration's claims of attempts to release detainees who cannot be released where they were detained because (1) it is not their country of citizenship, and their country where they hold citizenship refuses to take them (2) They will lack any civil rights in their own country. To date I have seen no investigative proof this is not true but instead opinions using one or two cases then applying those situations to broad swath of detainees.

I think there is an over simplification in how difficult this situation, inherited by the Obama administration, really is. I would expect this to take a minimum 2 years to solve.

While not everybody in American journalism can have the benefit of exposure to another culture through their parents, being fluent in another language is a big factor with understanding and empathizing with other cultures and understanding that people can see things in different ways.

I wouldn't say that's an axiom, but there probably is some kind of connection. I'd say it has more to having been imbued with an appreciation for another culture along with the American one. In my own case, its very reflexive for me to identify with and defend bigotry against all groups, because I can easily empathize with the plight of others. I was reading a review of Bruno on another page here in Salon, and was a bit floored by the writer's contention that while Borat was a well-meaning romp, Bruno is anti-gay. I squirmed through Borat, I just kept thinking what I would think if the character was a rep from one of my ethnic groups--it wouldn't have been funny to me. Except for that naked fight scene. That was hilarious.

"The central assumption in our discussions of Guantanamo and detention policy generally has been, and continues to be, that those in Guantanamo are, by definition, Terrorists. No matter how many times that is proven to be false, the assumption endures."

And this false assumption must be held to because it helps back up the other grossly false assumption that the twin towers "fell" rather than blew the fuck up as they so self evidently did. Once you decide to hold to one untenable false assumption you are going to need other equally false ones to prop up the original one.

And that's what Cheney kindly provided by creating the un lawful combatant status and the holding pen that is Gitmo. And the one long running false assumption both feeds on and supports the other long running false assumption.

Clever these Chinese aren't they?

Today, McClatchy has proven that journalism is dead.

-- Archtype

That is because McCaltchy bought up a bunch of good local newspapers and laid off good journalists.

You state the McClatchy piece is too long at 1300 words. What are we, morons? Your piece talking about the article was 1200.

So we invade and occupy his country and then decide that -- although he worked against our Enemies -- some alleged "associations" he had reflect an agenda that conflicts with ours and a "source's" unverified accusations that he helped our Enemy entitle us to lock him away.

The standard isn't that it's just from one source and unverified, but rather that it is "unverified or single-source but plausible." Who better to decide plausibility than the Pentagon?

Link at sig: Wikipedia entry on the Seton Hall report, which refers to several studies into the handling of detainees taken to Guantánamo Bay done by professor Mark P. Denbeaux of the Seton Hall University School of Law, and some of his law students.