Wednesday, June 11, 2008

“The right questions were asked. I think there’s a lot of critics—and I guess we can count Scott McClellan as one—who think that, if we did not debate the president, debate the policy in our role as journalists, if we did not stand up and say, ‘This is bogus,’ and ‘You’re a liar,’ and ‘Why are you doing this?’ that we didn’t do our job. And I respectfully disagree. It’s not our role.”

—David Gregory, NBC News correspondent, 9 June 2008 (as quoted by Scott Ritter, here)

The “right questions” are those, as Gregory implies, that do not question the basic assumptions behind the enterprise; that would be irresponsible. Journalists are not supposed to “debate the policy” or, God forbid, debate the Commander in Chief. Forgive me if I cannot help but picture Pharaoh’s scribes.

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