Lies and deceptions

David Brock has written a letter to the Washington Post:

I am writing to express my deep concern over the recent use of a dishonest anonymous source by The Washington Post. As you have surely become aware, on September 4, the Post printed an article titled "Many Evacuated, but Thousands Still Waiting; White House Shifts Blame to State and Local Officials." In the article, an anonymous "senior Bush official" sought to dismiss criticism of the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina by contending falsely that "[a]s of Saturday [September 3], [Louisiana Gov. Kathleen] Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency."

The Post was responsible enough to print a correction to the original article, pointing out that, in fact, Blanco declared a state of emergency on Friday, August 26 -- before the hurricane made landfall -- though the correction did not note that the error occurred because the Post relied on a "senior Bush official" who provided false information. Nonetheless, I believe this incident raises serious questions the Post needs to address.

There is more so go read it all.

It should be clear to the media that anything coming from an anonymous "senior Bush official"^* should be considered at best a deceptive distortion and at worst an out right lie. The job of a journalist is not only to report but to check the facts before reporting. It has become obvious that there are few "journalists" left. Five minutes of "fact checking" is all that would have been required to determine that the anonymous "senior Bush official"^* in the Post story was lying. We need journalism and journalists more than ever. We have damn few of them unfortunately.

^* Karl Rove