So by now we all know how they tried to spike the story of Rev. Wright, the unreconstructed racist who served as Obama’s preacher for some twenty years. Read it all if you haven’t already.
But let me add my two cents to the issue. I think what is truly shocking isn’t that people like Spencer Ackerman proposed smearing random conservatives as racist because they didn’t recognize how self-evidently awesome Obama is. No, what is shocking is that no one is shocked by it. No one speaks up and says, “are you insane? That would be unethical as a journalist.” No instead what we saw was the sheer banality of it, in their eyes. Just as Hannah Arendt found it remarkable that the Nazis could talk about exterminating the Jews with all the fervor of your typical county zoning commission meeting, we should find it damning that nobody thought there was anything shocking in what Ackerman said.
And isn’t that an ethical breach? I mean in law we are required to report when other lawyers do something unethical and it’s the same rule for doctors and nurses. But aren’t journalists required to report when other reporters are behaving unethically? Or are we prepared to say that journalists are not held to the same high standards as lawyers?
But let’s go on, because this seems to be a running theme these days.
