The press seems to have forgotten until recently[?] that it does not work for but opposite the government, as another representative of the people.
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"(The fact that committee chairman Ted Stevens had refused to swear in these oil executives doesn't much alter the principle -- as the Post points out, it's still a crime to lie to Congress even when not under oath.)"
Amazing
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This administration has been uniquely inclined to treat everything as fair game, to spin a terrible terrorist attack against this country as a kind of marketing campaign for a Hollywood story about a president's leadership abilities and an administration's unparalleled right to evade normal Congressional oversight and to savage critics as traitors, to treat even national defense information as raw fungible material for propaganda purposes, for marketing the war and then spinning the post-war and then SwiftBoating critics. The press to varying degrees has tried to maneuver to get at the story through all the various and imperfect ways journalists know how, the front door and the back door, the podium story and the back story, and the triangulated story. There's a kind of agony play at hand now, and I think it demonstrates among other things how very much this administration was willing to manipulate the truth, the press, and ultimately the American public in some sort of never ending campaign that flickered at its most extreme and excessive into the orbit of something I can only describe somewhat ridiculously as fascism. The threat appears to have receded, but the sense one is left with, of a great democracy that is far more vulnerable than many had realized, is one of shock and tragedy, as well as relief.

Laura Rozen