'Why Is Everybody Always Picking On Me'

In Piling On the New York Times With a Scoop, Howard Kurtz repeatedly tries to fathom the mystery of why the Times is being attacked for its banking-data story when others including the LA Times and the Wall Street Journal published it too.

Wild guess: Because the New York Times broke the story.

Going out on a limb here.

UPDATE: There's an unbridgeable divide here, with people who believe this is a serious war on the one side and most of mainstream media, definitely including Kurtz, on the other.

I don't want to gratuitously bash Kurtz. No, let's do it with purpose and gusto. He seems like a decent guy, is one heckuva hard-working reporter and unlike many others at the Post gives conservatives plenty of column inches. But online yesterday and in print today, he's writing with sincere surprise at the reaction generated by the New York Times' exposure of a successful, legal anti-terrorist program. The funny thing is, when he quotes the Times' critics he runs down many of the reasons we're outraged:

• The program works
• It is legal
• Here are some safeguards to make sure it's legal
• Did I mention that it works

In today's story, he also has a mini-timeline: the LA Times' Doyle McManus (a former Postie) was hearing out a Treasury official's objection to publication when a Blackberry note came in saying the New York Times had gone with the story online. So they printed their own version. And it appears the Administration didn't bother trying to block the Wall Street Journal, with the cat out of the bag.

And yet after all this, Kurtz can still write:

Even by modern standards of media-bashing, the volume of vitriol being heaped upon the editors on Manhattan's West 43rd Street is remarkable -- especially considering that the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal also published accounts Friday of a secret administration program to monitor the financial transactions of terror suspects. So, in its later editions, did The Washington Post.

But more than anything else, the story reconfirms the fact that many people, entirely aside from their hatred for President Bush,* don't believe we're in a mortal struggle to defend our civilization. People who believe that couldn't say the following as if it were some kind of defense, as Keller does:

"I always start with the premise that the question is, why should we not publish? Publishing information is our job. What you really need is a reason to withhold information."

And who can think of a reason to do that?

UPDATE II: Hugh Hewitt says he's getting letters "particularly from the left" about a "conspiracy of silence" aiming at the New York Times instead of the Wall Street Journal. Um, see this here item above, my lefties, presumably Howard Kurtz not among them. Hewitt points to Patterico saying--with more certainty than I have--that the Journal was only playing catch-up, while the NYT and LAT were both going to run the story regardless. Either way, Kurtz's surprise at the anger directed at the New York Times, the paper that broke the story, well, surprises me.

*I don't put Kurtz in that category. Let's face it, he's just too amiable.