THURSDAY'S LETTERS: Yost's Rove Piece Biased, E&P's Gitmo Scoop Praised, 'Lazy' Journos on Bush Iraq Trip

By: E&P Staff In today's letters, a reader charges AP reporter Pete Yost with bias over his article about Karl Rove while another simply attacks Rove, a reader thinks E&P's Gitmo scoop shows a greater trend in the government, and a reader says he is happy to pay $50 for TimesSelect.


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What I fail to understand is why the military is being allowed to determine what the press can and cannot cover. Things are seriously out of kilter when the government goes to such great lengths to keep the American people from learning what is without question our business. The government acts in our name, uses our hard-earned funds for its projects, and, for that matter, exists at our pleasure and for the sole purpose of providing for our common welfare. If we cannot find out what the government is doing (and the military is, after all, an arm of the government -- theoretically subordinate to civilian officials), we cannot hold it accountable. And that means we no longer have government of, by, and for the people. Extreme as it may sound, the reality is that when American citizens are unable to control their government, there has been a coup.

All Americans should be alarmed by these developments. It is time to take back the reins of government from the extremists who have subverted this once-great democracy and turned it into a petty dictatorship.

J.G. Berinstein
Northridge, Calif.


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AP Writer's Rove Article Biased ... or Right On

Pete Yost's article on Karl Rove is about as one-sided as it gets. The fact is that Rove has not been found to be guilty of any crime! If it were a crime to mislead the press (if he did), then one Joseph Wilson would be in jail by now!

The fact is that the press is not interested in the truth. It is interested in trying to get the goods of effective Republicans. When liars like Wilson are exposed, the press goes after those who exposed him, demanding their pound of flesh.

When journalists reveal secret National Security programs in violation of the law, they want to hide the criminality of the leakers, who we are to suppose have told the truth and have no agenda. In short, the press has a double standard.

The press doesn't care that Wilson lied. The fact is that the press has a double standard when it comes to leakers. If it suits their purpose it is supposedly legal, but if it doesn't it must be illegal.

H. Michael Sarkisian
Sacramento, Calif.



Why any reporter worth their salt would ( still ) trust anything that comes out of this White House is unbelievable -- especially anything coming from Rove, Cheney or any of their dishonest, manipulating, traitorous peons.

And yet the Washington Post, New York Times, and others continue to feed us their political crapola and call it "news". Read about Bush's big trip to Iraq -- every damn word could have come directly from Rove central. And probably did.

If the media doesn't wise up soon -- and wise up a LOT -- this country is going to end up 100% corporately run, with our Constitution and Bill of Rights worth no more than toilet paper. Its happening now ...

We need the mainstream media to awaken -- and do its job. So many of us keep hoping ...

Gary Van Ess
Green Bay, Wis.


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'Lazy' Journos Whining About Secret Bush Trip

Reporters have no one to blame but themselves if they feel "spited" over Bush's secret trip to Iraq. American journalists have lost any concept of investigative reporting. You're lazy. You sit around drinking coffee waiting for PR releases to fly out of your fax machines. Trying to find the PR release that slid under the desk is the closest you come to investigative reporting. Bush's secret trip should be a wake up call to journalists to stop worrying so much about their hair and make-up and put more focus into their actual jobs. Americans have been waiting for journalists to actually make use of their First Amendment rights for quite some time now. Having First Amendment rights, by the way, doesn't entitle you to have truth placed in your lap; it gives you the right to SEARCH for the truth -- and sometimes that truth is farther from reach than the PR release that has slid under your desk. Journalists today have become so self-absorbed, so self-righteous, so arrogant, that they actually think of themselves as above having to do any difficult work. If journalists were automobile mechanics and acted as lazy in the garage as they do out on the field, the American public would not tolerate the incompetence and we'd take our business elsewhere.

Michael Luo
Seattle, Wash.


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'NY Times' Worth a Buck a Week

Is Times Select worth a buck a week? I'm one of the louder (if least known) critics of the Times, but I gladly pay the fifty a year just for what I get on Monday morning. Paul Krugman is the best op-ed writer in the nation (though [Greg Mitchell] is no slouch either), and Bob Herbert is a clarion voice of sanity. To me, that alone is worth the cash. Curiously, the guy that everybody fawns over, the Webby's "person of the year" is to my mind the weakest link in the Times' op-ed stable short of Brooks, who is positively soporific. Friedman is icy, vain, and almost always wrong. FAIR did a great expose on how many times he's pronounced "six more months" till everything's all dusted off and calm in Iraq. But the mass media and the reading public buy him like he's the burning bush itself. Odd business you fellows work in ... and people think we in the blogosphere are strange.

Brian Donohue
Daily Revolution