Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 7:47 PM by Gene

Remember Jayson Blair? Fired from the New York Times because all his stories filed from Tuscaloosa and Pocatello were actually written in his bedsit with a bit of local colour lifted from the internet? What exactly did he do wrong? He copied what everybody else was saying, and it was mostly true and he saved a bundle on expenses.

On the other hand, media organisations spent a fortune sending vast teams halfway across the world to Baghdad to come back with a news event that never happened, and then paid their heavyweight commentators even more dough to amplify the hogwash. I mean, in what way is Simon Jenkins's column* any less risible than that Iraqi information minister announcing that the American aggressors' stomachs are now being roasted in hell? And which ought to be the greater media embarrassment - the sacking of Jayson Blair or the non-sacking of the Baghdad Museum?

Good question, Mark Steyn!

*This hack wrote of "...the destruction of the greatest treasure from the oldest age of Western civilisation, the greatest heritage catastrophe since the Second World War. We who claim to crusade for civilised values could not summon one tank to defend their earliest repository..." Or as Mr. Steyn says, "Etc., etc."