There are journalists and then there are so-called journalists. In the latter camp is Anthony Martin, featured in a hour-long program on Fox news recently, in which he was presented as a journalist. Martin is an obsessive critic of Barack Obama (he says Obama once trained to overthrow the government) and is the source of [...]

As reports proliferate about greed and crime in the suites, it was refreshing to hear praise for a pair of principled newspaper corporate executives, Anthony Ridder, CEO of the former Knight Ridder chain, and Gary Pruitt of McClatchy. John Walcott, Washington bureau chief of Knight Ridder (now McClatchy) lauded both Oct. 7 in remarks on [...]

Now that the national party conventions are history the biggest remaining political shows are the debates. The three presidential contests kick off Sept. 26 and conclude Oct. 15. The vice-presidential candidates go at it Oct. 2. I have a bit of time, therefore, to debate with myself about whether to watch any of it. Debates [...]

As a grandfather of eight inquisitive kids, 14 and under, I’ve had my share of squirmy moments. “Pop, what’s Viagra?” I hope now that none of my grandkids quiz me about Levi Johnston and what exactly he did that led to his warm greeting by John McCain at the Republican convention. Some in the media [...]

Politics and government nowadays are as much about stagecraft as statecraft. The “hurricane-disrupted” Republican national convention is a recent example. Gustav was more than a thousand miles away and no threat to St. Paul. The threat was to the possibility of Republicans coming across as doing politics as usual while Americans were being battered. Irony [...]

It took six years but Steven Hatfill now has an apology from New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof for the distress caused by his columns, beginning in 2002, that tied Hatfill to the 2001 anthrax attacks that caused five deaths. Hatfill sued Kristof and the Times for defamation, but had nothing to show for his [...]

If I were still writing editorials, I would comment on, and condemn, Russia’s use of its military against Georgia. I would also have something to say about the Bush administration’s huffing and puffing about Russian aggression. The point I would make is that the U.S. set a terrible example for how nations should behave with [...]

Jane Mayer, an experienced and reliable journalist, has written “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals,” a book that reports how the International Committee of the Red Cross found that the Central Intelligence Agency tortured people. How can that be? After all, President [...]

When journalists are caught recycling material, a frequently-heard explanation is that they commingled notes – that is, they copied passages they admired, put them in their files and then, in the course of writing a story, mistook the borrowed work for their own. This is essentially what Michael E. O’Neill, nominated by President Bush for [...]

If you go to Page 17 of the national edition of the June 25 New York Times, stop at a story headed “Bipartisan Group to Speak Out on Detainees,” then scroll down to the ninth paragraph, you will find the following statement by retired Major General Antonio Taguba: “There is no longer any doubt as [...]