I’m reading this new book by Dave Kindred.
Here’s what is grabbing my attention:
Walter Pincus says the reason he became a news reporter was to “change the world.” (Pg. xx)
I don’t want to get my news from people who are motivated to change the world. Such people should become activists. I don’t trust them to be objective when reporting the news.
Dana Priest has a cartoon on her desk about a reporter getting jailed for reporting on espionage. It’s ludicrous. Who needs her persecution complex? We live in the freeest country in the world with the New York Times et al publishing key details about terrorist programs that will cost American lives and these journalists pose as patriotic heroes.
Heather Mac Donald writes for the Weekly Standard July 10, 2006:
BY NOW IT’S UNDENIABLE: The New York Times is a national security threat. So drunk is it on its own power and so antagonistic to the Bush administration that it will expose every classified antiterror program it finds out about, no matter how legal the program, how carefully crafted to safeguard civil liberties, or how vital to protecting American lives.
The Times’s latest revelation of a national security secret appeared on last Friday’s front page–where no al Qaeda operative could possibly miss it. Under the deliberately sensational headline, “Bank Data Sifted in Secret by U.S. to Block Terror,” the Times blows the cover on a highly targeted program to locate terrorist financing networks. According to the report, since 9/11, the Bush administration has obtained information about terror suspects’ international financial transactions from a Belgian clearinghouse of international money transfers.
When Washington Post reporters Eli Saslow and Rchael Backman married, presiding rabbi Ariel Stone said: “The two of you share a wonderful passion for tikkun olam.”
That’s the last passion I’d want reporters to have. Just ferreting out the truth is not enough for such types. They have to effect social change.
