Joe:

Thanks for noticing and thanks especially for the link. Actually, I'd be satisfied with "occasionally intelligent". To be honest it was the amount of time I was spending here and at Tacitus posting comments that convinced me I'd better get a blog of my own and use my own bandwidth.

Ah - another blogchild!

Journalistic accuracy is a fine goal, but I have to question the objectivity of anyone who complains about Hersh's sources but doesn't mention a single word about Judith Miller's.

this is like a carousel, everyone goes round and round.

hey fling93, did you ever question the objectivity of anyone who wrote about Judith Miller's stinky sources without mentioning a single word about sy hersh?? no doubt you read a good deal of material on the subject. the matter has very little to do with objectivity.

There's actually a deeper question re: how accurate the media CAN be on certain stories, esp. those on Sy and Judith's foreign affairs beat. If it was so easy, national intelligence budgets could be a lot lower - and when governments seek to hide what they're doing, the process of journalism and the process of intelligence differ only in the means of persuasion considered acceptable.

Belmont Club has written some fine essays on this topic.

That said, there are egregious examples of materials that are simply false and known to be false. "Memento Meets the New York Times" is a good example. Or Faustian bargains that are indefensible if journalists are to be held to reasonable standards - like CNN covering up stories from Iraq in return for access, or reporters using ex-Baathist minders as guides.

Well, Hersh may have gotten a few things wrong about Afghanistan and Syria, but his reporting on Abu Ghraib seems to have borne out fairly well.

Personally, I had no idea about Hersh's sources until now. The only thing I've read by him was the first Abu Ghraib piece, and that seemed to rely mostly on the Taguba report. His subsequent pieces didn't seem to add anything I didn't already know or suspect, so I haven't bothered to read them.

Most of the bitching I've read about Miller has mostly been in pieces bitching about Miller herself, not pieces calling for improvements in journalism. The main complaint didn't seem to be that she used anonymous sources, but that the sources she used have proved to be unreliable, and that she should have known because they all had well-known vested interests. I did read one piece that briefly discussed anonymous sourcing in relation to Miller, but concluded the practice had more pros than cons, and merely suggested that journalists had a duty to make sure unverifiable sources were reliable before using them. And it wasn't a blog, but a magazine article, so they didn't have a comments section. Point me to a good place for me to complain, and I'll be glad to comment. I do try to be as nonpartisan as possible, and you can see at my own blog if I succeed and complain there if I don't.

This was the the first piece I've seen that called for an end of anonymous sourcing in reporting altogether, and presumably for the good of journalism instead of for partisan gain. It seems obvious to me that the true motive behind such a call is highly questionable if they fail to mention Miller, especially since she seems to be the most obvious example to use given that her own paper just recently admitted problems in her sourcing.

Interestingly enough, the Glittering Eye piece quotes a comment from Hal that actually specifically mentioned Judith Miller -- but the quote was trimmed to exclude the reference even though it was quite relevant to the point being made.

fling93:

I plead guilty to having a point of view which may not quite be what you appear to think it is. If that's bias, so be it. I have no intention of being balanced or objective on my own blog—I set it up expressly for the purpose airing my opinions.

The absence or presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and whether Ms. Miller reported this issue in a professional and appropriate manner are matters of almost complete indifference to me. A year ago I felt that the Bush Administration had erred in placing much weight on WMD's as a reason to go to war with Iraq and I feel precisely the same way now. Generally, if something doesn't interest me I don't post about it.

By the way you might want to read up on the "tu quoque" fallacy. Whether I am myself objective is completely irrelevant to whether Seymour Hersh is objective.

My problem is not lack of objectivity (I read plenty of partisan blogs), but that the post seems to pretend to be objective, proclaiming a goal of holding journalists to a higher standard. This is a worthy and nonpartisan goal, but your choice of examples seem to indicate a different motive. If your true goal is instead to give ammunition to conservative readers to use against liberals who cite Hersh, I think you should just say so, making the post about the reasons you think Hersh is unreliable. As it is, it seems disingenuous. If that was not your intent, maybe you should edit the post.

Since I consider Winds of Change to be a rather nonbiased and objective blog despite advocating viewpoints I don't always agree with, I felt it valuable to point this out for other readers who come here for the same reason.