Fair and balanced

Dan Froomkin strikes back:

There is undeniably a certain irreverence to the column. But I do not advocate policy, liberal or otherwise. My agenda, such as it is, is accountability and transparency. I believe that the president of the United States, no matter what his party, should be subject to the most intense journalistic scrutiny imaginable. And he should be able to easily withstand that scrutiny. I was prepared to take the same approach with John Kerry, had he become president.

This column’s advocacy is in defense of the public’s right to know what its leader is doing and why. To that end, it calls attention to times when reasonable, important questions are ducked; when disingenuous talking points are substituted for honest explanations; and when the president won’t confront his critics -- or their criticisms -- head on.

The journalists who cover Washington and the White House should be holding the president accountable. When they do, I bear witness to their work. And the answer is for more of them to do so -- not for me to be dismissed as highly opinionated and liberal because I do.

Amen to that. Keep up the good work.

Jane Hamsher @firedoglake has more:

Number one, Dan Froomkin's column is often the only thing worth reading in the Washington Post, the one thing they're managed to do right as they crawl their way out of the 18th century amidst a series of spectacularly bad decisions that have blown their credibility and set them in lockstep with the wooly mammoth. So the reporters don't like the guff they're taking from bloggers? I fucking bet they don't. But that's what you get when you set the bar so low the only people who stick around are the ones who can limbo under it.

FWIW, I agree that Froomkin's column is about the only thing worth reading most of the time, but Jane's post should be read in full.

I am sick and tired of the inane mantra that the press needs to be "fair and balanced". Fair and balanced for whom? The press is not supposed to be partisan, it is supposed to be objetive and it is supposed to have the public's interests at heart, not those of the public servants. It is charged with holding the government, all branches and all parties, accountable to we the people.

I am sick to death of the incestuous Plamegate reporting, in which the likes of Bob and Viveca (not related) Novak, Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, Andrea Mitchell and Bob Woodward have the unmitigated gall to be reporting and bloviating on the subject of who leaked what to whom and when, as if they were as confused as we are, and that this story had the ramifications of a parlor game, while all the time they are or were right in the thick of the story and know full well who leaked what to whom and when.

The country is going to hell in a handbasket thanks to the inept and mostly evil and corrupt war criminals in the administration and the K-Street Republican controlled congress, but the MSM is more concerned about being "fair and balanced" than it is about informing we the people. What rubbish.

I am sick and tired of the MSM not doing its f***ing job.

Kudos to Dan Froomkin for standing his ground.