I refer specifically to this
piece of garbage produced yesterday by the corporate stooges who make up the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.
They managed to produce 24 paragraphs of pure, unadulterated crap -- a collection of words and punctuation so putrid the Friday edition should be disposed of in a toxic-waste landfill rather than placed in a recycling bin.
In the newspaper business there is little that is more vile than a paper that stabs its own reporters in the back in order to kiss the government's ass.
One paragraph is actually true:
We should make clear that the News and Editorial sections of the Journal are separate, with different editors. The Journal story on Treasury's antiterror methods was a product of the News department, and these columns had no say in the decision to publish. We have reported the story ourselves, however, and the facts are that the Times's decision was notably different from the Journal's.
Indeed, the editorial and news departments at every major newspaper are as separate as you can get being in the same building.
Then the editorial tries to explain that while the WSJ published the same basic story that the NY Times did, the WSJ story was published for love of flag and country while the NY Times version was filth and lies.
You see, the WSJ only published the story to help America:
Based on his own discussions with Times reporters and editors, Mr. Fratto says he believed "they had about 80% of the story, but they had about 30% of it wrong." So the Administration decided that, in the interest of telling a more complete and accurate story, they would declassify a series of talking points about the program. They discussed those with the Times the next day, June 22.
Declassified talking points. That says a lot right there, doesn't it?
So, unable to stop the wicked NY Times from publishing lies, the brave terrorist trackers in our government turned to the WSJ.
Around the same time, Treasury contacted Journal reporter Glenn Simpson to offer him the same declassified information. Mr. Simpson has been working the terror finance beat for some time, including asking questions about the operations of Swift, and it is a common practice in Washington for government officials to disclose a story that is going to become public anyway to more than one reporter. Our guess is that Treasury also felt Mr. Simpson would write a straighter story than the Times, which was pushing a violation-of-privacy angle; on our reading of the two June 23 stories, he did.
Now, Glenn Simpson has just been labeled a government shill by his own newspaper. My guess is that Mr. Simpson is either A. Really a shill, or B. Sending out his resume this morning. I vote for B. Although it might be difficult for him to type cover letters with that bayonet in his back.
But backstabbing isn't quite good enough. More bloviating is necessary:
Some argue that the Journal should have still declined to run the antiterror story. However, at no point did Treasury officials tell us not to publish the information. And while Journal editors knew the Times was about to publish the story, Treasury officials did not tell our editors they had urged the Times not to publish. What Journal editors did know is that they had senior government officials providing news they didn't mind seeing in print. If this was a "leak," it was entirely authorized.
So, the government was furiously trying to keep the treasonous Times from publishing but they never said a peep to the loyal Americans at the WSJ. In fact, the whole thing was the government's idea. Yeah, that's it!
It was, you see, an authorized leak. Sort of like that Valerie Plame thing.
The WSJ then spends several paragraphs documenting how disloyal and hypocritical the Times is. You'd think that Sulzberger's first name is Osama.
On issue after issue, it has become clear that the Times believes the U.S. is not really at war, and in any case the Bush Administration lacks the legitimacy to wage it.
No legitimacy? Whatever gave them that idea?
And then, the coup de grace:
The current political clamor is nonetheless a warning to the press about the path the Times is walking. Already, its partisan demand for a special counsel in the Plame case has led to a reporter going to jail and to defeats in court over protecting sources. Now the politicians are talking about Espionage Act prosecutions. All of which is cause for the rest of us in the media to recognize, heeding Alexander Bickel, that sometimes all the news is not fit to print.
Shhhhhhh! Don't write anything the government doesn't like. They might call us spies. Let's suppress important news because we don't want to go to jail. Jail is bad. Bad food and filled with smelly working-class types. Better to live in blissful ignorance among the investor class.
Pathetic.