The Press Can Teach The Vatican All About Orthodoxy

From the liberal Romanesko media site, a rare dissenting voice:

Pioneer Press editorial page associate editor Mark Yost complains about the "slanted reporting" from Iraq. "I know the reporting's bad because I know people in Iraq," writes Yost, whose Knight Ridder colleague, Yasser Salihee, was shot and killed in Iraq last month. "A Marine colonel buddy just finished a stint overseeing the power grid. When's the last time you read a story about the progress being made on the power grid? Or the new desalination plant that just came on-line, or the school that just opened, or the Iraqi policeman who died doing something heroic?...

Orthodoxy police quickly intervene, in Romanesko's letters section:

From PETE HISEY: I think Mark Yost is on to something. I look forward to stories like “Iraqi Schoolgirl Makes It Home Alive” and “Nearly a Third of Iraqis Now Have Fresh Water at Least Twice a Week.” How about “Some Fallujah Houses That Are Still Standing?” Or “The Runaway Success of the Iraqi Oil Export Program?” Or maybe “I Didn’t Need Both Legs Anyway, Brave Iraqi Child Crows?”...

and, in the middle of a related argument:

From STEVE LOVELADY: In their ad hominem attacks on me, both Logan Anderson and Mike Henkins deftly avoid addressing the issue at hand:

Is Mark Yost, a Knight Ridder editorial writer in St Paul, correct in his assessment of the situation in Iraq, and his claim that it is being distorted by reporters on the ground?

Or is it Yost's colleagues, the Knight Ridder's award-winning reporters who led the way in exposing the WMD fraud while the rest of the press was gullibly signing on to that misbegotten bandwagon -- not to mention the outstanding Knight Ridder reporters currently on the ground in Iraq -- who are correct?

To say that these KR reporters "....consistently exposed the lies at the heart of the Iraq invasion and the grim reality of the current occupation" is neither a liberal nor a conservative statement. In fact, it's an apolitical statement. But it is an accurate description of the journalism that they did, and continue to do....

Reporters committed to reporting on explosions, and only explosions, still have a very difficult time grasping what the word "lies" means. Sure, Lovelady, it is entirely apolitical to say Bush lied rather than that most intelligence agencies, many of Saddam's commanders and even some antiwar activisits believed in the existence of WMD.  Just playin' it down the middle there.

Comments

[Jon majors]

Lovelady didn't say who the lies came from. But there were definitely lies from different parties that eventually led to the administration believing that the war was needed, no matter what bent you are.

[Christopher Fotos]

Lovelady's shots are aimed squarely at the Bush Administration. When he writes about "WMD fraud," I think his gist is pretty clear. It's your standard Bush lied/people died invective.

In my probably not very humble opinion.