"Your job description as a journalist is to question and

scrutinize critically, never to repeat claims uncritically, no matter how highly placed the sources are in the bureaucracy. Don't ever forget that. You're a damned good writer, but your job is completely worthless if you forget that."

Source, Stieg Larsson, who was a journalist for 30 years in Sweden. I grant you that it is written in a work of fiction, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, but it is an editor's admonition to a much younger reporter who has been fed a lie by a policeman on behalf of the prosecutor who is busily prejudicing the public prior to a trial. One of many lies spread by the prosecutor in this case to damage the credibility of the defendant in a case.

American laws are different regarding what may be released before a trial, thank heaven, but the admonition still holds true, whether it is Barack Obama, or George W Bush prior to Gulf War 2, or **** Cheney on any issue you care to name, or Colin Powell for whom I feel nothing but the greatest sympathy when he was used and fed disinformation to spread before the nation and the world prior to and during Gulf War 2. No wonder he resigned.

It is particularly true of the Tea Party who say any number of foolish illogical and craftily made-up stories to advance their arguments and to discredit the President and their opposition or the many Institutes of Right Wing thought feeding Conservative Journalists, Charles Krauthammer, or the whole of Fox News. The decline in the critical reporting of news stories in the years following Watergate is a constant source of irritation to me.

Now all reporters seem to do is act as megaphones for whoever wishes to use them, regardless of the quality of the information, or the track record, Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann, of the source.

Rob