(continued)

Practically everyone else ignored the story, until Judy Woodruff moderated a discussion on NewsHour on Thursday between John Stauber, of the Center for Media and Democracy, and Robert Zelnick, a former ABC News Pentagon correspondent who teaches journalism at Boston University.

Stauber said the Pentagon's propaganda program was a clear violation of federal law, while Zelnick made a series of comments that should have gotten him fired as a journalism professor. "I just don't get upset about anything that's completely natural," said Zelnick. Apparently that was the attitude of most of his colleagues in the mainstream media.

As usual, Glenn Greenwald did the most thorough job of covering the story in the blogosphere. He also had the pithiest summary of the problem: "Media organizations simply ignore—collectively blackout—any stories that expose major corruption in their news reporting."

Winner:
Gabe Sherman, for pointing out in the New Republic that, besides bolstering Ralph Nader's reputation as an increasingly irrelevant egomaniac, Nader's repeated runs for the presidency are also damaging the fundraising efforts of all the useful entities he created, from Public Citizen to Citizen Works. The latter had to lay off all of its staff and vacate its offices; now it exists only on the Web.

Sinners:
Right-wing pundits like Michael Gerson who continue to denigrate Obama's position on the war in Iraq as immature, compared to the policies of those wonderful grown-ups who invented this never-ending catastrophe—and never want it to end. "The older man [McCain], by insisting on victory, is more responsible and realistic about the future," Gerson wrote. Washington punditry doesn't get any more idiotic than that.

Winner:
Graham Stewart of the Times of London, for a useful history lesson about the Olympic torch, and how we owe the whole grand tradition of carrying it across continents to Adolf Hitler.

Winner:
Libby Copeland, for explaining in the Washington Post all the different ways that Obama has become a rock star: "Politics is like rock music this way. Everyone wants everybody else to know they were there first, man, before the album's Pitchfork review and the sold-out gig at the 9:30 club," Copeland said. "You've been with Obama since The Speech? Well, I knew him before The Speech!"

Winners:
Frank Rich in the New York Times, Rick Hertzberg in the New Yorker, and especially Tom Shales in the Washington Post, for the best analysis of last week's debategate:

Frank: It earned reviews "more appropriate to a slasher movie like Prom Night than a civic event held in Philadelphia's National Constitution Center."
Rick: "Seldom has a large corporation so heedlessly inflicted so much civic damage in such a short space of time."
Shales: "The boyish Stephanopoulos ... looked like an overly ambitious intern helping out at a subcommittee hearing, digging through notes for something smart-alecky and slimy."

Sinners: Times columnist David Brooks and Wall Street Journal writer Dorothy Rabinowitz, for believing, naturally, that big issues like flag lapel pins got exactly the attention they deserved in Philadelphia.

Sinners:
All the press mavens (Michael Wolff, where are you?) who promised us that this time, for sure, Rupert Murdoch absolutely, positively would not interfere with the Wall Street Journal—the same way he has with every other property he has ever owned. WSJ managing editor Marcus Brauchli lasted exactly four months after Murdoch's takeover before throwing in the towel.

Reporter: Richard Vanderford
Seen Something? E-mail to alert me to anything you see that warrants high praise or high dudgeon.

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Charles Kaiser is the author of The Gay Metropolis and 1968 in America. He has been media editor for Newsweek, a member of the metro staff of the New York Times, and a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where he covered the press and book publishing. To learn more, visit charleskaiser.com.

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