Sunday, June 25, 2006

New York Times: Motivation

Austin Bay says this:

A lot of what passes for reporting and analysis in Washington and New York is merely passing on government and academic gossip. That’s why the leap to leaks is but a nudge and a puddle jump. The government officials and employees participate; some of them are legitimate whistle blowers, but folks, those are rare and when they occur they are Pulitzer material. Most of the game is simply incestuous Beltway conversation and the rapacious media demand for a “headline.”

But some headlines hurt– they damage our government’s Job One: national security. Perhaps the Times’ editors don’t believe we are engaged in a global counter-terror war against Islamo-fascism. We are. At one time there was hole in south Manhattan they could not ignore. Five years on we have accomplished much –I suspect the heaviest lifting has been done (and I’ll be writing more about that later this summer). For America’s economic and media elites the war has been easy. As I’ve written time and again the Bush Administration’s greatest failure was to tap the American public’s post-9/11reservoir of willingness; however, just enough of the American public stepped forward. Since 9/11 American economic performance has been admirable (a comment I have not seen on the Times front page, but it is true). The US military has served with great distinction, despite major media attempts to “My Lai” Abu Ghraib and now Haditha. Moral compromise in war is inevitable; compromising legitimate intellgence operations is not. History may well conclude this is a war that didn’t need America’s media elites, and perhaps that suspicion curdles the gut of a couple of New York Times bigshots. [emphasis added, -ed.]

Mr. Bay hits the dagger right on the heart of the matter, to mix my metaphors, doesn't he?

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