Here at the Shark Blog we give credit where credit is due, even to those whom we also frequently criticize.
In today's editorial, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Editorial Page Editor Mark Trahant admitted he made some mistakes in the recent Nethercutt controversy
... our Editorial Board concluded that Nethercutt was part of a larger story, the coordinated effort by the Bush administration to change the story about Iraq. If the story is about progress in Iraq, then, we believed Nethercutt's view to be, the lesser story is about troops who have died or who face daily threats of death or injury. That was something our Editorial Board found unacceptable and said so. But then we erred because we allowed the discourse to slip into name-calling.I still think that the P-I is completely off-track to insist that the bigger story is about US casualties. In any military engagement, the main story should always be about the purpose and success of the mission itself, and whether the progress of the mission justifies its terrible sacrifices. To fixate primarily on casualties is a form of unilateral disarmament.This just goes to show I can be callow and shallow, too. And, I've learned something from this debate, too. We need to provoke passionate opinions in a way that promotes respect for the other side of the argument.
But at least the P-I is listening to its critics and raising its own bar. And who were the critics? Trahant wrote:
Many readers -- and even more non-readers -- detested the P-I's editorial cartoon and editorials regarding Republican U.S. Senate candidate George Nethercutt.The non-readers are not named, but I have to conclude that many of the ones he has in mind come from the blogosphere. I listed a number of the blogs that criticized the P-I last week here. And I know for a fact that someone at the P-I reads blogs. My traffic log shows that I get several hits from the P-I on a typical weekday. One of these hits followed Instapundit's link to my entry about the P-I.
The blogosphere, I believe, is growing in its importance as a constructive quality control mechanism that helps improve the output of the commercial media.
Also in today's P-I is Johann Hari's column for the Independent with the headline: "It's slow going, yes, but Iraq is getting better each day".
In todays NYT, I wonder if the will now print the retraction.
"There are already signs of public unease. Representative George Nethercutt, a Republican running for the Senate in Washington, was criticized last month for saying the media were focusing on "losing a couple of soldiers every day" rather than the "better and more important" story of progress in Iraq. (Mr. Nethercutt later complained that some accounts left out that he said losing the soldiers "heaven forbid, is awful.") But Mr. Nethercutt's was just the sort of bland formulation that would have driven Owen wild.
Americans are already considering the relative merits of staying the course in Iraq, putting in an international peacekeeping force, and even pulling out. It is a somber debate, with great consequences for this nation, and the world. We must enter into it with full information, without lapsing into what Owen trenchantly called "the old lie" — or new ones."
NYTimes