Sometimes when I read things in the Wall Street Journal like the recent editorial attacking the New York Times over its expose of the Bush administration’s secret banking surveillance program, I’m tempted to cancel my subscription.
Then I think of articles like Greg Jaffe’s “A Camp Divided,” a detailed and arresting portrait (from June 17, 2006) of the conflict between two American colonels over how to approach the effort to build an Iraqi army. Or today’s fascinating feature about a schism between two competing Afghan-exile poetry reading groups in Washington, D.C. And I remember that the Journal editorial page — which serves up doses of bitterness, invective and hypocrisy in nearly every piece it publishes — should not be held against the impressive work of the larger Journal newsroom.
In yesterday’s Times, Frank Rich dissected how the Journal editorialists, in their effort to knock the Times and promote Bush’s anti-journalism power-play, wound up unfairly denigrating their own newsroom colleagues. (Rich’s column is behind the Times pay wall; Editor and Publisher offers excerpts.)
Meanwhile, the Times’ op-ed page has two conservative columnists, while the Wall Street Journal failed to replace its last centrist when he departed, and now presents its readers with an ideologically pure roster of righties. Oh, I forgot, conservatives don’t believe in diversity anyway.