The stenographic, invasion-enabling reporting of the run-up to the U.S. war in Iraq had a precedent of sorts in World War I. The story emerges in “A Farewell to Arms,” a review in the June 11th New York Review of Books of British author Mark Thompson’s The White War: Life and Death on the Italian [...]

Frank Rich’s take in the May 10 Times on the plight of the newspaper business concluded that, if the public wants in-depth news content, it will have to finance it. In Rich’s words, “…the time will soon arrive for us to put up or shut up. Whatever shape journalism ultimately takes in America, make no [...]

The White House Correspondents Association annual dinner, which takes place tomorrow night, is an orgy of self-congratulation, the ultimate black-tied manifestation of the dangerous coziness between Washington’s journalistic elites and the people they cover. Its defining moment came in 2006, when attendees responded with stunned, sullen incomprehension as comedian Stephen Colbert delivered a magnificently brutal [...]

As a former reporter and journalism professor I am naturally inclined to think highly of the right of free speech. Still, I can’t help applauding what the British government did when it slammed the door on Michael Savage and his ilk. Savage is an American radio host who spouts some of the ugliest and most [...]

Education matters. That is the message from President Barack Obama, especially to those who think the economy is challenge enough. But even a president with a message will become distracted by events — by swine flu or torture memos or instability in Pakistan. You need only look at last week’s Presidential press conference to know [...]