After reading David S. Broder's column today (Listen to the Brass) asking for a Congressional investigation of the accusations made by the whine offensive of a number of retired generals, I recalled something I had read about a week and a half ago at Riehl World View. There was this observation that David S. Broder of the Washington Post seems to be experiencing the early stages of senility.

Goleta, Calif.: Any word on how Scott McClellan's blood pressure (or general health) is hold up these days?

David S. Broder: To the best of my knowledge, the senator has not made public the results of any very recent medical exams. But I have seen him at work on Capitol Hill and he appears to be healthy and vigorous.

Shortly after that, I got a unsolicited phone call from the Washington Post, asking if I wanted to subscribe to the paper and I got to talking with the young man and I said, "I get the message." Don't dismiss Riehl's misgivings as just media antipathy. He has allies in the MSM who cannot speak out themselves."

I thought about the conversation as I contemplated the fact that elite media figures are getting an unprecedented amount of criticism these days. Not even before the internet was invented by Al Gore has there been any criticism of the elite media like there is now

The Post's managing editor has expressed confidence in Broder and the rest of his writers, after all, if you fired a columnist everytime a blogger caught a mistake, lie, distortion, partisan attack, baseless premise or exercised the fallacy of special knowledge, the bylines would look like a merry-go-round.

But the case the bloggers are making about the ethical lapses and incompetence of the elite media are serious and it hasn't gone unnoticed at the highest levels of government.

There have always been people who have opposed wars. Wars are terrible things. On the other hand, if every time there were critics and opponents to war, we wouldn't have won the Revolutionary War and we wouldn't have been involved in World War I or II, and if we had we would have failed, and our country would be a totally different place if it existed at all, if every time there were some critics that we tossed in the towel. I think we just have to accept it, that people have a right to say what they want to say, and to have an acceptance of that and recognize that the terrorists, Zarqawi and bin Laden and Zawahiri, those people have media committees. They are actively out there trying to manipulate the press in the United States. They are very good at it. They're much better at (laughing) managing those kinds of things than we are, and we have to recognize that we're not going to lose any battles out in the global war on terror out in Iraq or Afghanistan. The center of gravity of that war is right here, and in the capital of the United States of America and other Western capitals, in London, they're trying. It's a test of wills, and what's at stake for our country is our way of life.

Adding the litany of ethical violations to the charge of giving aid and comfort to the terrorists constitutes "a definitive rebuke" to the MSM. The elite media has covered the war on terror with "a casualness and swagger that is the special province of those who have never had to actually fight a war, or bury the results."

The elite media have consistently denied all charges of partisanship, ethical violations and journalistic irresponsibility, but they are being challenged by informed citizens, bloggers and people fighting and dying for this country. We are having to rely on private citizen journalists to embed with the American military in Iraq to see what is actually going on because the elite media simply insist on reporting the most important story of our time from hotel balconies in Baghdad.

Furthermore, they were able, because they were embedded, to see and then give the world and the people of the United States a slice of what was actually happening, real reality, and it was a good thing. More recently, very few people had been being embedded. We're still offering that opportunity, but there have been far fewer journalists who have stepped up to become embedded.

The situation cries out for serious congressional oversight and examination; hearings are needed as soon as Congress returns. These charges have to be answered convincingly -- or Broder and the rest of the media asses have to go.

Crazy Politicos

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