Journalists

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Gone are the days (if there were any such) when journalists could be depended on to find the truth and publish or broadcast it, whatever the consequences. Well-known, respected reporters and even entire news networks now have their own agenda, handed down by owners or by the necessity of maintaining close ties to those in power in order to have the latest scoop. Those in power have become skilled at manipulating the news media in these and other ways, with many journalists (though by no means all of them) acting mainly as political agents.

"Without a media critical of government, America[n] democracy simply ceases to exist -- as occurred when the Bush administration took this nation to war in Iraq by distorting the information it had about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction."¹

Keeping track of the behavior of individual journalists and news agencies is therefore comparably important to keeping track of the behavior of individual politicians.

Journalists

• Bob Woodward "was a hero for his role in Watergate. He was a shameless opportunist when, in return for access to inside information, he portrayed President Bush as an in-charge leader in "Bush at War" -- a portrait that was convincingly debunked by Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who had actual knowledge of our clueless, disengaged and in-over-his-head president."
• Dana Priest "deserves a Pulitzer for revealing the existence of CIA-run secret prisons." ¹
• Dick Meyer
• Fred Branfman: author of reference ¹
• John Gibson of Fox News attacked reporters who were ignoring the Anna Nicole Smith story (of which he was offering continuous coverage) to focus on the Iraq war as "snobs." [1]
• Judy Miller (see Plame affair) "was a mouthpiece, turning out biased reporting that was fatally dependent on administration sources pursuing their own agenda. ¹
• Nicholas Kristof "was a real reporter when he quoted Joseph Wilson refuting administration lies on Niger." ¹
• Peggy Noonan: conservative; sometimes described as being a shill for large-corporate interests; gifted speechwriter with a flair for memetically successful turns of phrase
• Robert Novak (see Plame affair) "was no more a journalist than a Pravda correspondent when he transmitted slimy administration attacks on (Joseph) Wilson." ¹
• Seymour Hersh: Wikipedia; broke the story of the My Lai Massacre
• Ted Koppel: see ¹, ²

Deceased

• Lars-Erik Nelson
• Tim Russert "is a hack when he throws softball questions at high government officials like Donald Rumsfeld, while mercilessly bullying the few antiwar figures he allows on his show such as Dennis Kucinich." ¹

References

1. The Ted Koppel I knew (by Fred Branfman, on Salon.com)
2. Today's media, more McCarthy than Murrow: stiff criticism of Koppel's 9/1 interview with FEMA then-Director Michael Brown (includes link to video of interview)