corrente

More essential reading from the New York Review of Books. Lots of juicy detail.
About Pravda on The Potomac:

In the weeks following {Powell's UN] speech, one journalist—Walter Pincus of The Washington Post—developed strong reservations about it. A longtime investigative reporter, Pincus went back and read the UN inspectors' reports of 1998 and 1999, and he was struck to learn from them how much weaponry had been destroyed in Iraq before 1998. He also tracked down General Anthony Zinni, the former head of the US Central Command, who described the hundreds of weapons sites the United States had destroyed in its 1998 bombing. All of this, Pincus recalled, "made me go back and read Powell's speech closely. And you could see that it was all inferential. If you analyzed all the intercepted conversations he discussed, you could see that they really didn't prove anything."

By mid-March, Pincus felt he had enough material for an article questioning the administration's claims on Iraq. His editors weren't interested. It was only after the intervention of his colleague Bob Woodward, who was researching a book on the war and who had developed similar doubts, that the editors agreed to run the piece—on page A17.

About Izvestia on the Hudson: Judy Miller really does use kneepads:

The performance of the Times was especially deficient. While occasionally running articles that questioned administration claims, it more often deferred to them. ... The September 8 story on the aluminum tubes was especially significant. Not only did it put the Times's imprimatur on one of the administration's chief claims, but it also established a position at the paper that apparently discouraged further investigation into this and related topics. On the aluminum tubes, David Albright, as noted above, made a special effort to alert Judith Miller to the dissent surrounding them, to no avail.

Asked about this, Miller said that as an investigative reporter in the intelligence area, "my job isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of The New York Times what the government thought about Iraq's arsenal." Many journalists would disagree with this; instead, they would consider offering an independent evaluation of official claims one of their chief responsibilities.

In other words, what some have taken to be a rhetorical flight of fancy by tinfoil hat types—that we have a state-run media—is for Judith "Kneepad" Miller quite literally true.

Isvestia on the Hudson has an ombudsman here. Ask him why Judith Miller still has a job as a reporter, when she's really an administration flack.

Pravda on the Potomac has an ombudman here. Ask him why they buried accurate stories by Walter Pincus in the back of the paper, and put administration propaganda on the front page.

And ask them both why they don't read The Howler. We do.