Page Six Scandal


Kaus calls this opinion journal op-ed "infuriatingly self-righteous":

Yellow Peril

Kaus is right but it is more than that. It is willfully and falsely naïve. The author pretends that Page Six (i.e. Rupert Murdoch) plays by a different set of rules than the "respectable media." Burkle quotes with approval from the New York Times:

"Keeping a list of reliable sources, of course, means having a list of people who need to be protected somewhat. Those who cooperate--called 'friends of the column,' according to people who work with and at Page Six--are rewarded; those who fight back are punished."

Oh, the horrors of tabloid journalism. But Page Six is operating just like Sy Hersh does. Here's an excerpt from a profile that describes how Sy worked at THE NEW YORK TIMES:

In those years, much attention was focused on Hersh's personality and reporting techniques. One of his editors at the Washington bureau, Robert Phelps, recently recalled, with wry disbelief, the kinds of messages that Hersh would leave. "He would call people and he'd say 'I'm Seymour Hersh, I'm doing a story on this . . . If he doesn't call me, I will get his ass.' They'd call back."

This post looks at how Hersh got the Abu Ghraib photos. Here is Hersh and the New York Times conspiring with John Dean during Watergate.

So tell me again: How is Page Six different than the New York Times or the New Yorker?

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On leaks, bias and truth