Do Bloggers Suck or Does TradMed Just Suck More?

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Above the Law, reporting on a speech 9th Circuit Court Chief Judge Alex Kozinski gave at Fordham Law, summarized his argument as, “A New Argument in Favor of Cameras in the Courtroom: Bloggers Suck.”

Now, for the record, I’m all in favor of cameras in the courtroom and have long been, particularly once I discovered that TradMed journalists look for different things at hearings than I do. And particularly today, as I’m deciding whether I have time to get to the closing arguments in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, drink some beers with bmaz, and be back here in time to drive to Syracuse for my mom’s 70th, I’d love the option of sitting at home and streaming the trial (though beers with bmaz might still win the day).

But I wanted to look more closely at the argument Kozinski seems to be making (assuming, of course, that the blogger at Above the Law competently replicated it, because there’s always the possibility he’s just being loud and biased).

Kozinski started his talk by going over some of the arguments he has made before [PDF] in support of cameras (e.g., studies show cameras don’t affect the proceedings, quoting his “old boss” Warren Burger — “People in an open society do not demand infallibility from their institutions, but it is difficult for them to accept what they are prohibited from observing.”).

It wouldn’t be like the O.J. trial, which decidedly set the cameras-in-the-courtroom movement back. Kozinski advocates stationary cameras that would not zoom in, zoom out, or otherwise overly dramatize the courtroom events. Kozinski acknowledged that if you were to choose between a O.J. media circus or reports from informed journalists like Nina Totenberg or Linda Greenhouse, one might be happy to live without cameras.

But that’s not usually the choice one has. Kozinski pointed to the “long, slow decline of the newspaper industry” and the “rise of a much more diffuse style of coverage” as a major reason why cameras should be brought into courtrooms. Increasingly, the public is relying on “pseudo-journalists” (aka bloggers) for their instantaneous legal news.

“On the Internet, the loudest voice gets the most attention,” said Kozinski, who said that tends to lead to a distortion of the coverage of a case. He also raised the risks of relying on unknown bloggers, pointing to the case of “Dr. Flea.”

[snip]

“The days of obscurity for judges and reliable, informed journalists are gone and gone forever,” said Kozinski. “If courts don’t change with the times, change will be forced upon them.”

Kozinski’s arguing, apparently, that we need cameras in the courtroom because trials are no longer covered with the skill that Nina Totenberg and Linda Greenhouse bring to their work. Furthermore, Kozinski seems to be arguing, the public is fooled into following “loud” chroniclers of trials, rather than competent ones. And, it seems, Kozinski believes readers (the blogger here doesn’t specify what kind of reader) risk … something … if they rely on pseudonymous bloggers.

As some of you no doubt recall, a blog named “FireDogLake” actually once covered a trial–the Scooter Libby trial–also covered by Nina Totenberg. FDL’s coverage was undoubtedly biased and at times even delved into heavy snark (since then, in fact, one of the bloggers has developed a bit of a reputation for a potty mouth). Nevertheless, FDL’s liveblog–written under the pseudonyms “emptywheel,” “Swopa,” and “Pachacutec”– became the standard “instantaneous” news from the trial. Two of the TradMed journalists in the courtroom–including one whose beat was the Court–followed the stream, not to mention an unknown number of journalists who chose to stay away from the court house and follow along the thread. The General Counsel for the Washington Post chose to follow FDL’s liveblog, rather than the superb work of Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig, because with five reporters testifying in the trial, he needed up-to-the-minute near transcription rather than twice-daily analysis of the events. When it was all said and done, Jay Rosen declared that in most categories of coverage “FDL was tops.” I assume Rosen even considered Nina Totenberg’s coverage of the trial when he said that.

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Contract Killers as PsyOp Warriors

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Several things stuck out for me in the NYT’s big story about DOD’s PsyOp contractors-as-assassination-flunkies. First, the degree to which DOD allegedly hid its assassination program inside a PsyOp venture. As the story reports, Michael Furlong, the guy running this show, was ostensibly engaged in strategic information, collecting information on Afghanistan’s social structure. But in fact, he was using that money to employ freelancers who, at a minimum, were targeting Afghans for assassination.

Mr. Furlong has extensive experience in “psychological operations” — the military term for the use of information in warfare — and he plied his trade in a number of places, including Iraq and the Balkans. It is unclear exactly when Mr. Furlong’s operations began. But officials said they seemed to accelerate in the summer of 2009, and by the time they ended, he and his colleagues had established a network of informants in Afghanistan and Pakistan whose job it was to help locate people believed to be insurgents.

Government officials said they believed that Mr. Furlong might have channeled money away from a program intended to provide American commanders with information about Afghanistan’s social and tribal landscape, and toward secret efforts to hunt militants on both sides of the country’s porous border with Pakistan.

And that, in turn, is interesting because we really need the kind of information collection Furlong was supposed to be doing. So imagine what happens when those purportedly engaging in such information collection lead to the deaths of their potential sources–it’d make this kind of information collection toxic (and potentially end up in the targeting of journalists and academic anthropologists also employed for such work, as has happened). That’s particularly a problem when, as Danger Room’s Nathan Hodge describes, more and more contractors doing PsyOp work are apparently doing something else instead.

But it also sheds light on some lesser-known players like International Media Ventures, a “strategic communications” firm that seems to straddle the line between public relations, propaganda work and private security contracting.“Strategic communications” firms have flourished in the strange new post-9/11 media environment. Unlike traditional military public affairs, which are supposed to serve as a simple conduit for releasing information to the public, strategic communications is about shaping the message, both at home and abroad. Why is that problematic? As Danger Room’s Sharon Weinberger pointed out, “When a newspaper calls up a public affairs officer to find out the number of casualties in an IED attack, the answer should be a number (preferably accurate), not a carefully crafted statement about how well the war is going.”

Afghanistan, in fact, has been a longtime laboratory for strategic communications. Back in 2005, Joshua Kucera wrote a fascinating feature in Jane’s Defence Weekly about how one of the top U.S. military spokesmen in Afghanistan was also an “information operations” officer, who reported to an office responsible for psychological operations and military deception. That kind of dual-hatting continues today: Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, the top military spokesman in Afghanistan, is also director for strategic communications in Afghanistan.

And then there’s the military’s interest in newsgathering-type intelligence on Afghanistan’s social and cultural scene. As we’ve reported here before, the top U.S. intelligence officer in Afghanistan complained in a damning report that newspapers often have a better sense of “ground truth” in Afghanistan (and suggested that military intelligence needs to mimic newspaper reporting, or even hire a few downsized reporters, to get the job done). Furlong’s scheme — and again, the Times account is a bit muddled here — may have shifted funds away from AfPax Insider, a news venture run by former CNN executive Eason Jordan and author/adventurer Robert Young Pelton.

Effectively, our propaganda efforts have themselves become cover for paramilitary activities.

And speaking of cover, was anyone else amused at the way this story reported the involvement of Duane Clarridge, an old CIA spook with a fetish for illegal ops?

Among the contractors Mr. Furlong appears to have used to conduct intelligence gathering was International Media Ventures, a private “strategic communication” firm run by several former Special Operations officers. Another was American International Security Corporation, a Boston-based company run by Mike Taylor, a former Green Beret. In a phone interview, Mr. Taylor said that at one point he had employed Duane Clarridge, known as Dewey, a former top C.I.A. official who has been linked to a generation of C.I.A. adventures, including the Iran-Contra scandal.

In an interview, Mr. Clarridge denied that he had worked with Mr. Furlong in any operation in Afghanistan or Pakistan. “I don’t know anything about that,” he said.

NYT reports that Furlong employed Mike Taylor’s company, which in turn employed Clarridge. And after Clarridge says he didn’t work for Furlong, NYT just leaves it at that, apparently not pursuing whether Clarridge worked for Taylor, which was the claim in the first place.

In other words, even while reporting the egg-within-an-egg quality of this cover, NYT lets Clarridge issue a non-denial denial and leave it at that.

But there may be a reason why NYT doesn’t want to acknowledge that this PsyOp contract became cover to pay Duane Clarridge to engage in off-the-books spywork.

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Judy Miller’s Editor Calls on Journalists to Expose False Journalism

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Tim F made this point implicitly, but it deserves to be made explicitly. Do you really think Howell Raines, the editor who oversaw Judy Miller’s Iraq War propaganda, is really the one to exhort journalists to call out Fox for its false journalism?

One question has tugged at my professional conscience throughout the year-long congressional debate over health-care reform, and it has nothing to do with the public option, portability or medical malpractice. It is this: Why haven’t America’s old-school news organizations blown the whistle on Roger Ailes, chief of Fox News, for using the network to conduct a propaganda campaign against the Obama administration — a campaign without precedent in our modern political history?

[snip]

Why has our profession, through its general silence — or only spasmodic protest — helped Fox legitimize a style of journalism that is dishonest in its intellectual process, untrustworthy in its conclusions and biased in its gestalt?

[snip]

Why can’t American journalists steeped in the traditional values of their profession be loud and candid about the fact that Murdoch does not belong to our team?

[snip]

As for Fox News, lots of people who know better are keeping quiet about what to call it. Its news operation can, in fact, be called many things, but reporters of my generation, with memories and keyboards, dare not call it journalism.

I’ll admit that when I first suggested that Judy Miller was not engaging in journalism when Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby outed Valerie Plame to her, I wished that other journalists would have the courage to acknowledge that what she was doing was not journalism. It would have been nice, then, to have a column like this, calling on journalists to expose disinformation in the guise of journalism.

But really. Does Howell Raines have no sense of irony?

After all, it’d be a pity if Raines missed the irony of the fact that Judy Miller now works for Fox News.

NYT Thinks TeaBugger James O'Keefe Entitled to Own Set of Facts

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As I reported a while back, chief TeaBugger James O’Keefe had called on the FBI to release the videos he took while (according to the FBI) by false pretense, entering US government property with the intent of interfering with a phone system owned by the US government. He wanted those released because they would show he neither bugged the phones nor managed to do anything in the phone closet (largely because they were arrested before they were able to get to the phone closet). But even while calling for the release of one set of his videos, O’Keefe has always refused to release the set of videos he took while filming various ACORN employees not break the law. That’s presumably because, as an independent investigator reported, that O’Keefe edited those videos, possibly to make them as incriminating as possible.

The unedited videos have never been made public. The videos that have been released appear to have been edited, in some cases substantially, including the insertion of a substitute voiceover for significant portions of Mr. O’Keefe’s and Ms.Giles’s comments, which makes it difficult to determine the questions to which ACORN employees are responding. A comparison of the publicly available transcripts to the released videos confirms that large portions of the original video have been omitted from the released versions.

[snip]

Experienced forensic investigators would be able to determine the extent to which the released videos have been manipulated to distort, rather than merely shape, the facts and the conversations, as ACORN alleges.

Unfortunately, the TradMed doesn’t seem to understand that videos can be manipulated in the editing process, and so they have continued to report James O’Keefe’s tales precisely as he has claimed they happened, without closer scrutiny. Of note, the TradMed has always just accepted James O’Keefe at his word that he dressed in his silly pimp costume, when it appears he did not.

Now the NYT has stepped up that journalistic malpractice by (apparently) refusing to even consider whether its repetition of the claim that O’Keefe was dressed as a pimp is backed up by any independent evidence. Brad Friedman lays out an entire exchange that, first, one of their readers, and then Brad Friedman himself had with the NYT, attempting to get them to either correct or back up the claim that O’Keefe dressed as a pimp. Over the course of the email exchange, Greg Brock, NYT’s Senior Editor for Standards, evolved his explanation for making the claim as follows (click through to see the full set of emails):

  • “Mr. O’Keefe himself explained how he was dressed — and appeared on a live Fox show wearing what HE said was the same exact costume he wore to ACORN’s offices. … If there is a correction to be made, it seems it would start with Mr. O’Keefe himself. We believe him.”
  • “At one point, the camera was turned in such a way to catch part of the “costume” he was wearing. And ACORN employees who saw him described his costume.”
  • “I don’t have any comment on our coverage.”
  • [after complaining that Brad’s reader shared the email with him] “My response wasn’t addressed to the public and wasn’t a statement on behalf of The Times.”
  • “I’m not going to have our corporate communications folks wake up tomorrow and discover that I have issued some official statement for publication.”
  • “I said our statement was based on a video. I did not say that we saw the video online or that it ever was online. … And through [NYT’s] reporting — whether it was watching videos, interviewing sources (who would not always go on the record) or doing other research — we feel we have confirmed the information we reported. Just because I am not willing to give you a link — or don’t even have a link — doesn’t mean our reporting is in error.”
  • “Please re-read that reference to Fox and Mr. O’Keefe. I did not cite that as our source.”
  • “The main thing I cited was the video.”

Now, to be fair, it’s possible that the NYT has seen the videos that O’Keefe refuses to release publicly, and based on that, they believe that O’Keefe was dressed as a pimp during this stunt. Heck, perhaps they have even done the kind of forensics former MA Attorney General Scott Harshberger called for. But they never said so.

Barring that, it appears that the NYT has watched the heavily edited videos O’Keefe has released publicly, seen him assert on TV that he was dressed as a pimp, and believed the assertions he made on Fox over assertions to the contrary. Read more →

Fred Hiatt Loves Torture

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Well, I don’t know that for a fact. But I do know that the publication of Marc Thiessen’s propagandistic claims about Pelosi on the WaPo’s editorial page says more about the WaPo’s editorial page than it does about Pelosi. Let’s start with Thiessen’s primary claim.

According to this 2004 report, Pelosi objected to a CIA plan to provide money to moderate political parties in Iraq ahead of scheduled elections, in an effort to counter Iran, which was funneling millions to extremist elements. “House minority leader Nancy Pelosi ‘came unglued’ when she learned about what a source described as a plan for ‘the CIA to put an operation in place to affect the outcome of the elections,’ ” Time reported. “Pelosi had strong words with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in a phone call about the issue. . . . A senior U.S. official hinted that, under pressure from the Hill, the Administration scaled back its original plans.”

Well, as Thiessen points out himself (and the WaPo even links), David Ignatius has already reported this … in the WaPo! So why would Fred Hiatt feel the need to publish that news again, on his op-ed page?

But Thiessen–and presumably Hiatt–want to repeat this news so they can “prove” that Pelosi had the ability to alter intelligence programs that she didn’t like.

Only there are several problems with Thiessen’s claim. First, the briefings. As we’ve shown over and over and over and over, Pelosi was not briefed that the CIA had already waterboarded Abu Zubaydah during her only briefing on this issue before 2006. And she certainly wasn’t briefed that CIA was going into the torture business before they did so. So it would have been absolutely impossible for her to halt the waterboarding that had already happened, not to mention the planned ones she wasn’t told about. Given the CIA’s (probably deliberate) failure to brief Pelosi in timely fashion, they cannot now, no matter what Dick Cheney tells the former Bush speechwriter to write, claim that Pelosi could have prevented the waterboarding.

And the fact-impaired Thiessen also claims that this letter does not register a protest.

At the briefing you assured us that the [redacted] approved by the Attorney General have been subject to an extensive review by lawyers at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Justice and the National Security Council and found to be within the law.It is also the case, however, that what was described raises profound policy questions and I am concerned about whether these have been as rigorously examined as the legal questions.

That “I am concerned” about the “profound policy questions,” Thiessen? Those are protests. Protests, of course, that we know the CIA blew off.

So this is a transparently false argument, printed in Fred Hiatt’s premier real estate.

I guess Dick Cheney must be getting worried again about his liability for torture.

Update: minor changes for accuracy.

NY Times Admits Gruber Problem, Fails To Mention Krugman Problem

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imagesIn a full throated mea culpa by the New York Times Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, appearing in the Sunday edition, the Times officially describes the critical and material implications that arise when readers are misled by undisclosed interests of sources and authors in their paper of record.

These examples have resulted in five embarrassing editors’ notes in the last two months — two of them last week — each of them saying readers should have been informed of the undisclosed interest. And on Thursday, the standards editor sent Times journalists a memo urging them to be “constantly alert” to the outside interests of expert sources. The cases raised timeless issues for journalists and sources about what readers have a right to know and whose responsibility it is to find it out or disclose it.

That is exactly right. One of the prime examples the Times’ Public Editor bases his proper conclusion on is that of Jonathan Gruber:

Jonathan Gruber, a prominent M.I.T. health economist, wrote an Op-Ed column and was quoted frequently in other Times columns, news articles and blogs on health care reform before it came to light that he had a contract worth nearly $400,000 to analyze health proposals for the Obama administration.

….

Gruber, the health care economist, wrote an Op-Ed column in July supporting an excise tax on so-called Cadillac health plans. Not long before, he had signed a contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to analyze the economic impact of various health care proposals in Congress. He did not tell Op-Ed editors, nor was the contract mentioned on at least 12 other occasions when he was quoted in The Times after he was consulting for the administration. After a blogger reported on Gruber’s government contract on the Daily Kos Web site, Gruber did volunteer it to Steven Greenhouse, a Times reporter interviewing him for an article on the excise tax. Greenhouse said he included the fact in a draft but struck it because the article was too long. Greenhouse said that Gruber’s views on the tax were so well-known that he did not think they would be influenced by a consulting contract. But had he realized how large the contract was, Greenhouse said, “I would have stood up and paid lots more attention.”

While it is nice the Times has admitted its problem with Gruber, and his wantonly serial failure to disclose material facts and appearances of conflict, it is extremely curious and convenient they dodge the most recent, and in many regards most glaring, example of their damage from Gruber’s Read more →

Supreme Court Blocks Video Coverage Of Prop 8 Trial

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images5thumbnail1.thumbnail11On Monday morning, the Supreme Court entered a stay order halting the live video feed of the groundbreaking Proposition 8 trial to other Federal courthouses as well as the delayed release of video clips from the trial via YouTube. I indicated back then that the history and blinding self interest of the Supreme Court in not allowing the encroachment of video into Federal courts because of the abiding fear it will lead to video in their own hallowed and august courtrooms. God forbid the citizens of the country be able to see what their public servants are doing; and public servants is exactly what Supreme Court Justices, for all their self righteous bluster, are.

Today, in an opinion just released in the case of Hollingsworth v. Perry, those fears came true.

Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSBlog summarizes the situation perfectly:

Splitting 5-4, the Supreme Court on Wednesday blocked any television broadcast to the general public of the San Francisco federal court challenge to California’s ban on same-sex marriage. The stay will remain in effect until the Court rules on a coming appeal challenging the TV order. The Court, chastizing the trial court for attempting “to change its rules at the eleventh hour,” issued an unsigned 17-page opinion. The ruling came out nearly 40 minutes after an earlier temporary order blocking TV had technically expired.

The Court gave the supporters of the Prop 8 ban two options to seek a final order against the television coverage: they could (as they have indicated they would) file a petition for review from the lower courts’ orders), or they could file a petition seeking what is called a “writ of mandamus” — that is, an order from a higher to a lower court to take, or not take, some action. The Court did not indicate whether it would grant review of either approach, although Wednesday’s order was a fairly strong hint that it would.

This spells the end of any hope of video coverage of the Prop 8 trial, whether it be live stream to other Federal courthouses or the delayed release of YouTube segments. It is curious that the Supreme Court is fine with a video feed to other locations in the same courthouse as the trial, but not to other secure Federal courthouses. Again, it must be assumed this is all about insuring that the objecting five pompous justices never have to have their demeanor and conduct seen by the citizens they serve. As I explained in the previous post, the Supreme Court, in Chandler v. Florida, has already admitted it is not about constitutional due process; therefore it is, whether admitted or not, about their vanity and elitism.

When the Supreme Court, in its opinion, says:

We are asked to stay the broadcast of a federal trial. We resolve that question withoiut expession any view on whether such trials shold be broadcast. We instead determine that the broadcast in this case should be stayed because it appears the courts below did not follow the appropriate procedures set forth in federal law before changing their rules to allow such broadcasting. Courts enforce the requirements of procedural regularity on others, and must follow those requirements ourselves.

it sure strikes me that the Court’s basis for finding the Local rule was violated, or inappropriately amended, is strained. At best. Others may differ, but for my money, this Read more →

A Rather Sad Ending For Dan

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The New York Court of Appeals today issued its decision denying Dan Rather’s appeal from the dismissal of his civil case. In light of the fact his case was pled and litigated under New York state law in state courts, this is, sadly, likely the last act in the play.

Dan Rather’s personal statement on the decision:

Naturally I am disappointed in today’s ruling because we know it is a grave miscarriage of justice.

Most of all I am disappointed that no court or jury studied the evidence and heard the actual facts of the case. The case was dismissed on purely technical grounds.

My mission continues to be working to ensure that the media can gather and report news unfettered by the influence of government and major corporate interests.

Dan Rather

This stems from a decision by the New York Appellate Division last September, specifically September 29, 2009. It was a horrible decision on a number of grounds, a copy attached here, but it was decided 5-0 by the Appellate Division which made the odds of the Court of Appeals granting the request to appeal slim.

Under New York state law and procedure, you need permission to appeal to the Court of Appeals from a unanimous Appellate Division decision. Either the Appellate Division has to give permission or Court of Appeals has to give permission; but there was no appeal as of a matter of right for Dan, and the Court of Appeals refused his request.

The decision last September by the Appellate Division was horrid and truly questionable legally, at least in my opinion, notably in the way it cut off the very discovery that could, and would, have provided the basis to overcome the deficiencies the court focused on. In essence, the appellate court prevented Rather from demonstrating his case, and then dismissed it because he had not demonstrated his case. Irrespective of that, however, the decision stands and Dan Rather appears unjustifiably done. Courage Dan!

Gruber Did Not Disclose Conflict to the WaPo

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One of the biggest puzzles in Jonathan Gruber’s explanation for why he hasn’t been disclosing his $400,000 HHS contract as he has led the campaign to support the bill is timing. By his own admission, he revealed the contract for a disclosure form associated with a December New England Journal of Medicine article. That form was dated November 30.

But the WaPo did not disclose the relationship for an op-ed published almost a month after he filled out that disclosure form.

Now, Gruber says he has disclosed the contract whenever he has been asked.

Gruber told POLITICO that he has told reporters of the contract “whenever they asked.”

But in a follow-up with the WaPo, Ben Smith reports that Gruber was asked by the WaPo, and he said he didn’t have any financial conflicts.

Washington Post op-ed editor Autumn Brewington emails that the Post, as a practice, asks writers to disclose any “conflicts of interest that might be relevant to this op-ed, including but not limited to financial or family relationships with any of the subjects of the article” and that Gruber, when asked whether he “received any funding, for research or otherwise, from organizations or persons identified in the column,” answered “no.”

Now, perhaps there’s some wiggle room here. Perhaps, since Gruber’s op-ed doesn’t mention HHS, even though it mentions the health care reform he was hired to consult on repeatedly, he felt he didn’t need to reveal the conflict. Perhaps there’s some confusion at the WaPo, which itself is having problems disclosing ethical conflicts (though Ben says Brewington was quoting directly from the exchange on disclosure).

But, at least given what we know, it looks like Gruber felt obliged to reveal the conflict to the NEJM on November 30, but when asked a similar question about financial conflicts less than a month later, he did not disclose it.

The Press Corpse Needs a Mirror

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I already beat Mike Calderone up about this on Twitter, so I apologize to him in advance for piling on. But I am utterly amazed by the lack of self-awareness shown by everything that went into the production of this story.

In it, Michael Calderone, whose media outlet is owned by big Republican money, and whose colleagues just gave Dick Cheney the most shameless blowjob this side of Judy Miller’s mushroom cloud, tells the story of a certain turmoil in the White House Press Corps.

You see, Peter Baker, who now works at the paper which helped Judy Miller shield the Vice President’s crimes for almost a year, but who used to work at Fred Hiatt’s paper, is concerned that journalists who work at outlets that produce “pieces with strongly argued points of view” will now be contributing to the press pool.

The media industry, as we all know, is changing.

And in this transition, there will inevitably be some friction as online news organizations, which may or may not be bound by the same professed standards of objectivity, begin taking on the responsibilities of long-standing, print publications.

That’s been apparent this week, as White House reporters have privately discussed and debated the recent addition of sites like Talking Points Memo and Huffington Post into the White House in-town press pool. It’s not that reporters are criticizing the work of either Christina Bellantoni or Sam Stein, but some have expressed concerns about pool reports coming from left or right-leaning news organizations that will then be used by the rest of the press corps.

“This is really troubling,” said New York Times reporter Peter Baker in an email to POLITICO. “We’re blurring the line between news and punditry even further and opening ourselves to legitimate questions among readers about where the White House press corps gets its information.”

Baker said he has no problem with outlets like Huffington Post, which he described “an important part of the marketplace of ideas.” But the site, he said, has a mission “to produce pieces with strongly argued points of view” and that puts the Times—or other non-partisan news organizations—“in a position of relying on overtly ideological or opinionated organizations as our surrogate news gatherers.”

While at the WaPo, Baker frequently partnered on stories with both Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei, now at the Politico giving blowjobs to Cheney. In fact, Baker covered the White House during the entire period of the discovery of JimmyJeffGannonGuckert, but he is not known to have complained about covering the White House with a gay whore working for a partisan outlet (though to be fair, GannonGuckert never contributed to the press pool). Before working at the WaPo, Baker worked for the Moonie Times, which lost $40 million last year to provide a mouthpiece for a far-right cult leader.

As far as I can tell, Baker has never won a Polk Award — though Josh Marshall has.

Also, as far as I can tell, Baker has also never complained that Fox News participates in the White House pool, in spite of the fact that it, like Fred Hiatt’s editorial page, produces “pieces with strongly argued points of view.” Nor has he complained that it, like the Politico and the Moonie Times, is owned by right-wing big money.’

Nevertheless, Baker is very worried about his credibility if he has to rely on pool reports from the HuffPo and TPM.