OK, perhaps the title is redundant...but the Executive Editor of the New York Times has this line in his column today . ..(which has quite a few other problems)
When Jayson Blair was caught fabricating stories in this newspaper, he became a global exhibit in the case against an unfettered press.
The example to be used in this case was Judith Miller...whose pure and simple lying led to the Iraq war, in which hundreds of thousands (and according to some more than 1 million) died. This not only included American soldiers -- mostly from poorer non-political families, but also included Iraqi children, women, elderly and peasants.
Jayson's crimes were nothing compared to Judith's.
Bill Keller was standing by during the bad reporting that led up to the Iraq war, and still complicit in the lies that keep this Great War on Terror operating at full speed -- costing us money and reputation, our soldiers their lives and their limbs, and our enemy their children's lives and their country's dignity.
That he cannot even bring himself to acknowledge it today illustrates what is wrong with our media..
...oh the article summary is this: investigating poor ol' Murdoch makes the news media look bad and tyrants feel happy. Left unanswered is this -- can you cite a few examples of where anyone considers News Corp assets to be "news media" -- most of us consider it to be tabloids (the sun, dailymail, nypost, notw) and propaganda (fox news, fox business, wsj). His businesses have never hurt a tyrant, only democracies.
Heck, most of us don't even consider the NYT (see Miller, Judith -- iraq war reporting & calling out torture only when committed by other countries) to be that much better than the publishing arm of the executive branch.
The solution is to have independent (not for profit, anyone?) media that are not "synergizing" with their owner's other interests.
