Just How Bad Is The State of Journalism Today?

     That reminds me to check the Columbia Journalism Review more often, not that they're perfect.

     I thought all three stories above the fold in today's Washington Post were awful, and here I'll examine one of them.

     "In Anbar, A Sense Of Abandonment" was written by WaPo staff writer Anthony Shadid.  If this is the best the post has to offer, it should be shut down.


     Above the fold Shadid only mentions one person who is actually unhappy, one person who got lots of money and guns from the Americans, and respect from the locals during the relevant period.

     After turning to page 8 we learn that, as expected, some Iraqis view the occupying U.S. military on their streets and busting into their homes as a foreign occupying military force and doesn't like it.  How many feel this way?  Certainly Anthony Shadid doesn't present any data. 

     In the 15th paragraph someone says that the British were better at occupying Iraq than the Americans.  You know, the British, who bombed the Kurds with chemical weapons and who summarily executed nearly 10,000 Kurds.  Didn't the Washington Post already tell you that maybe Saddam got the idea of gassing the Kurds from the British?  "[The British] understood how to take time to win someone to their side" the abysmal reporter Shadid dutifully echoes.  By the way, at no point does Shadid say how things went for the British after they left Iraq... within a few years the Iraqis were siding with the Nazis in WWII.  Could Shadid be any more stupid?

     Another unhappy guy, the second talked to in the article, now into its 28th paragraph, flashes a 25K rolex.  Listen, don't let this get back to the military or Sheik Issawi, but he's a crook who played the military for fools, and I'm thrilled he's now unhappy, and he can no longer loot the U.S. treasury.

     Anthony Shadid isn't worth shit as a reporter.  His Editor, the more responsible party, should be fired.