June 18, 2005

Journalists At War

Overheard at the editorial board meeting of the Washington Post.

"Ok, listen folks, if we don't want to look pretty silly on this Downing Street thing, how can we smoke and mirror our way out of it"?

"Well, let's just say we knew about it all along, so what's the big news? Didn't everyone know"?

"That's good. Because everyone knew that Bush had already decided to go to war back then, and we all knew it, duhhhh, then this Downing thing is just fluff, right"?

"Exactly, but there is one little problem."

"What's that?"

"Weren't we all reporting at that time that Bush was working hard on the diplomatic front, and that he was saying war is a last resort, and that we had to solve Saddam's WMD problem with the UN? I recall we were also reporting most everything the administration was giving us back then, including all that phony intelligence?"

"Yeah, someone might claim we weren't simply embedded with the administration, but that we were more like embowelled, huh?"

"Yes, but we can't let that discussion make any headway or we're sunk."

For another view on the press cover-up, whitewash and head-in-the-sand behavior, here is a piece from Joe Conason in Salon

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