Journalistic Ethics

The strange reactions of journalists Bertrand Pecquerie, Bret Stephens and Mike Moran to Easongate left me puzzled. What exactly is wrong with these guys? Then I recalled an incident from long ago when I was a student in college.

It was the days of the Iranian hostage crisis, when Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamofascist thugs held the staff of the United States Embassy in Tehran hostage. All over America people tied yellow ribbons around the old oak trees, but at college we had a different way of expressing ourselves. My roommates and I put up a sign on the door of our dormitory room bearing an anti-Iranian slogan. The next day we found that someone scribbled on the sign something to the tune of "Who do you think you are to attempt to mold public opinion? Are you a communications leader?" After a while I caught the scribbler. He lived on our floor, and was a freshman majoring in communications. Apparently this communications student heard from one of his professors that they, and only they, are the ones fitting to shape public opinion. Anyone who is not one of them is a just plebeian who is to remain silent in front of the television or radio, and to listen attentively while the journalists pontificate. The fact that my roommates and I hung a sign on our door really peeved this guy, and he thought it perfectly legitimate for him, as a budding member of the journalistic elite, to deface the sign.

Perhaps this is what resides in the psyche of the "Morans" of the MSM. Who are these bloggers that dare to criticize us? Who gave permission to these amateurs to express their opinions? How dare those guys in pajamas infringe on our territory? Chutzpah!!!