THE NEWS HACK'S CREED:
I know more than you.
I make lots more money than you.
I'm smarter than you.
I'm sexier than you.
I appear on TV all the time.
I work ten minutes a day.
I rule the universe.
I'm going to live forever.
You are an idiot.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 2:
A lie isn't a lie when it tells THE TRUTH.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 3:
I've come to realize that the looseness of the journalistic life, the seeming laxity of the newsroom, is an illusion. Yes, there's informality and there's humor, but beneath the surface lies something deadly serious. It is a code. Sometimes the code is not even written down, but it is deeply believed in. And, when violated, it is enforced with tribal ferocity.
--JOHN "OMERTA" CARROLL.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 4:
News isn't news when we don't report it.
PERMALINKS:
THE NEWS HACKS' DICTIONARY
THE EUGENE DAVID GLOSSARY
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Ay, but here's the real nub:
In a provocative essay in the November 2005 Harvard Law Review, Richard Posner, a federal appeals court judge appointed by Ronald Reagan, makes an even more unvarnished version of that argument. Much of the high court's constitutional decision making, Posner asserts, is inherently political.
That's why I call them the Nine Fingers; their decisions twist not-so-slowly in the wind of public fickleness. That's why you may want a liberal judge, and I a conservative; we agree with their politics. Of course the more we decide we want our favorite flavors on the court the less likely we'll have real justice. And that requires less thinking than Winnie the Pooh -- or a newspaper colyumnist.