All the News That's Fit to Slant

[Chiyo-chichi]

http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/index.php?id=617
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Michael Moore has posted Robert Fisk's column from yesterday on his site as a "must read." It is a very well-written indictment of the MSM.
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It is a bright winter morning and I am sipping my first coffee of the day in Los Angeles. My eye moves like a radar beam over the front page of the Los Angeles Times for the word that dominates the minds of all Middle East correspondents: Iraq. In post-invasion, post-Judith Miller mode, the U.S. press is supposed to be challenging the lies of this war. So the story beneath the headline "In a Battle of Wits, Iraq's Insurgency Mastermind Stays a Step Ahead of U.S." deserves to be read. Or does it?

Datelined Washington -- an odd city in which to learn about Iraq -- its opening paragraph reads: "Despite the recent arrest of one of his would-be suicide bombers in Jordan and some top aides in Iraq, insurgency mastermind Abu Musab Zarqawi has eluded capture, U.S. authorities say, because his network has a much better intelligence-gathering operation than they do."

Now quite apart from the fact that many Iraqis -- along with myself -- have grave doubts about whether Zarqawi exists, and that al-Qaida's Zarqawi, if he does exist, does not merit the title of "insurgency mastermind," the words that caught my eye were "U.S. authorities say." And as I read through the report, I note how the Times sources this extraordinary tale. I thought U.S. reporters no longer trusted the U.S. administration, not after the mythical WMD and the equally mythical connections between Saddam and the international crimes against humanity of 9/11. Of course, I was wrong.