The guardians of our discourse

These are the people that are supposedly "informing" the public about our nation's politics.

Exhibit A is Lisa Vorderbrueggen, the "Political Editor" of the Contra Costa (CA) Times. She writes the following attempting to defend Ellen Tauscher:

Yes, Tauscher voted to allow President Bush to start the Iraq war. But so did every other Democrat in the nation except one.

Of course, 23 senate and 133 House Democrats voted against the war resolution, but what do the "facts" have to do with it? The piece remains uncorrected on their website. And she knows about the error because I emailed her directly about it. Her response?

We were well into Iraq by the time I started covering politics and I made a mistake [...]

I just wish you would have called me when I sent an e-mail asking for you to talk to me.

You could have helped me understand the issue more accurately since you have followed it far more closely.

It was apparently my fault that she doesn't know how to use Google. And note that someone who wears the title "political editor" admits that she has no political memory prior to 2003. Oy vey. But that won't stop her from continuing to misinform the public with her brand of "analysis" as her paper's "political editor".

Exhibit B is Jay Carney, who is Time Magazine's Washington Bureau Chief. Atrios has been all over Carney the last couple of days, but this post about covers it. Carney writes:

In late 1994 and early 1995, President Clinton was in free fall. His aides despaired. They worried he might never recover from the shellacking the Democrats took in the 1994 mid-term elections. His approval ratings were mired in the 30's, and seemed unlikely to rise.

Problem for Carney is that Clinton's numbers during the time were in the 40s, but Carney doesn't let the truth get in the way of repeating the falsehood that Clinton was hugely unpopular. He also doesn't seem to realize that Clinton's approval ratings during the Monica mess were in the 50s and 60s. He doesn't know where people stand at the SOTU address. And he pretends that people don't care about Iraq when it consistently tops the list of issues people are most concerned about.

And remember, this from Time's "Washington Bureau Chief".

Is it any wonder the American public have been so ill-served by the political press in recent decades?

Update: Adding ... I'm glad that Time's new blog exists. What better vehicle to expose the pompous ignorance of Time's political writers to the world? Jay Carney and Joe Klein haven't been done favors by the blog. So if nothing else, the former-Wonkette has done us a favor by bringing us that blog. If I didn't know better, I'd think it was her subversive way to undermine Carney and Klein.