hammer + tongs on democracy now

If you're like me, you're a bit thrilled (and repulsed) when network pundits, in the course of their facile (pseudo-) analyses and less-than-substantial critiques of government policy and current journalism, get a bit riled up and trade snarky little barbs on-air. I've found a really good source for an extended hammer & tongs snarkfest. What makes it even better is that the gladiators are intelligent, competent journalists who are given extended time to engage each other on substantive issues, and yet there's still some blood, Rambo-style. Michael Gordon, chief military correspondent for the NY Times, appeared on Democracy Now!. Here's an excerpt:

AMY GOODMAN: Let me just ask something on that. Are you sorry you did the piece? Are you sorry that this piece --

MICHAEL GORDON: No, I'm not. I mean, what– I don't know if you understand how journalism works, but the way journalism works is you write what you know, and what you know at the time you try to convey as best you can, but then you don't stop reporting.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let me, let me–

and then a bit later on,

AMY GOODMAN: For example, David Albright, who is the U.N. weapons inspector, and I am quoting from Michael Massing's letter to the editor, responding to your objection to his piece in the New York Review of Books. Albright, writing that the Times’ September 13 story, which you also co-authored with Judith Miller, was heavily slanted to the C.I.A.'s position, and the views of the other side were trivialized. Albright says -- and this is the man who contacted the Times. Let me just quote for our audience, this is Albright saying, "An administration official was quoted as saying that the best technical experts and nuclear scientists at laboratories like Oak Ridge supported the C.I.A. assessment. These inaccuracies made their way into the story, despite several discussions that I had with Miller on the day before the story appeared, some well into the night. In the end, nobody was quoted questioning the C.I.A.'s position, as I would have expected." He says.

MICHAEL GORDON: Are you going to let me talk now?

AMY GOODMAN: If you could respond to that, please.

MICHAEL GORDON: Yeah. You're not well-informed on this issue, because -- I don't have any, you know, criticism of you as an individual, but you're not very well informed on this, because if you were well-informed on this -- I'm friends with David Albright. I think David Albright's an upstanding person who is doing very good work. I'm actually not Judy Miller, so I'm not the person he had the conversation with, but David certainly took the view early on, and he deserves a lot of credit for this, that the aluminum tubes were not intended for nuclear purposes. That's absolutely true, and as a person outside government, he did that analysis.

Here's a link to the whole interview. I guess there's a bit of shadenfreude at hearing Amy Goodman get a good back-handed slap across the mouth -- and of course shadenfreude at hearing her giving back just as good as she gets. I do like her presentation and Democracy Now! is a great program, but there's always a low-grade, holier-than-thou background radiation on the show. And often, those who are interviewed only serve to enhance the reflexive, self-congratulatorily peacenik, you-don't-know-what-it's-like-because-you-weren't-there-in-'68 atmosphere. Arundhati Roy, for instance. I'm not outright hostile to such a view or presentation, but it is nice to see it challenged -- as it's pleasant to see any non-reflective behaviors challenged. And it's a nice bit of investigative journalism (metajournalism?) about the NY Times and the relationship of its reporting on Iraq in the fall of 2002 to the subsequent invasion and justifications for the invasion.

tomatoes!

"Lemon Boy" tomatoes were planted in the terra cotta pots I'd had (idling) for years. Let's hope they'll survive the neighborhood cats, dogs and ducks.