We need one of these today

Nice review of a new biography of I.F.Stone:

Stone gives journalists a hero to honor:

Heroes are dangerous. We all know that.

Choose the wrong one and people can die. If a lot of people choose the wrong one, a lot of people can die.

But then every now and then, you can see a hero so perfect for a particular time, place and milieu that hero worship seems almost ordained.

I.F. Stone's time, it seems, has come around again 17 years after his death. In an "information era" of corporate journalism, startling wartime press conformity and acquiescence, a pack press with a summer camp mentality and those called "access whores" exchanging truth for the certainty of being manipulated, it is once again the hour of the great individualist and pariah of Washington journalism.

Read the whole thing...

Tags

More like this

Some guy named Mulshine, who is apparently an ancient journalist (remember: generation is mindset, not age), penned one of those idiotic pieces for Wall Street Journal, willingly exposing his out-datedness and blindness to the world - read it yourself and chuckle: All I Wanted for Christmas Was a…
Almost a year ago, Nature published a set of opinion articles, including Science journalism: Toppling the priesthood by Toby Murcott. I did not react at the time, but JR Minkel and Jessica Palmer did and got some interesting responses in the comments. The article was brought to my attention by…
You know I have been following the "death of newspapers" debate, as well as "bloggers vs. journalists" debate, and "do we need science reporters" debate for a long time now. What I have found - and it is frustrating to watch - is that different people use different definitions for the same set of…
Bloggers like to talk about how nasty the Main Stream Media is (I'm looking at you physioprof). And although I agree that there are MANY problems, I think that the fifth estate makes a real contribution to our public discourse. Now unlike what others have written, I am not talking about science…