Joe Klein

[Paul Kedrosky]

> This is disputed I know but IMHO reporters have neither more
nor less 
> obligation to say THE TRUTH than anyone else. There is nothing
so
> terribly special about the media. It's no more sitting in a
public trust 
> or complicit in the System and Theydom (however you want to
put it) than 
> a fairly big percentage of the rest of us. 

Two things. One: Your requisite reference to "Theydom" is only a
whisper-thin excuse for this topic popping up in pynchon-l.

Two: While your cynical "take" on the media and its truthfulness
(or, I suppose, its requisite truthfulness) is very 1990's and
all, full of carefully split hairs, I think it's crap. Saying
that the media cannot be trusted to tell the truth is a markedly
different thing from saying that the media shouldn't be expected
to do its best to tell the truth. One comes from a belief that
the media willfully and wantonly misrepresents itself, the other
comes from mere quirks in how messy events transpire (and
conspire) to make journalists look just as clueless as the rest
of us. 

Further, to say that there is "nothing terribly special about
the media" and that it is "no more sitting in a public trust"
than the rest of us, is just plain silly. Sorry for the ad
hominem-esque crack, but I honestly don't think it warrants any
more of a reply than that.

P.