Cronkite and journalism: The aftermath We really like Glenn Greenwald's work and are impressed with the quality of comments on his blog. An interesting debate developed in the comments on this piece as to how journalists should stand up to power (government).

Our answer: Just do it. You can never go wrong by questioning the group-think that goes into the decision making processes. Seldom are the occasions when better solutions cannot be found and the citizens' interests better served. Journalism in our country will never have the largely unified voice as would any given current regime. This will dilute their efforts and make it difficult to judge the effectiveness of our profession but in the end will make it more useful.

Our decision to oppose the invasion of Iraq (in seeming contrast to the majority of our citizens) did not come with a revelation from on high but rather from information available in the MSM. This, again, makes it difficult to paint the institution of journalism with any broad strokes, even considering that so many of the major players in the the media gave the invasion their tacit, if not direct, approval. The nature of our work does mean that we take in a larger sweep of journalism than most but there are no sources not readily available to any engaged consumer.  ¶ 7/18/2009 09:04:00 PM