Posted 5:43 PM by Floyd

Speaking of Gillmor, his latest blog post is a nasty bit of work:

Maybe the political press has simply lost its courage. Or maybe shallowness, callowness and a short attention span are the order of the day in political reporting. Who know? But it's amazing, and kind of depressing, to watch.

Some of the media's current uncritical worship of Bush stems from the nearly total lack of spine in the political "opposition," a Democratic party that has few interesting idea and fewer real leaders. The media can spot a leader, and Bush, however awful his policies may be, is one.

But leadership morphs to pure arrogance when the press fails to challenge political deceptions. It was not a coincidence that more than half of the American people came to believe that most of the Sept. 11 hijackers were from Iraq. They were gulled into this utterly wrong notion by an administration that is brilliant in its propaganda. Where was the press?

Too bad. Now that we need the political reporters and editors to stand up for the truth, they're hiding. Why, indeed?

The sentences I boldfaced imply that the Bush administration asserted that the 9/11 hijackers came from Iraq. Of course neither Bush nor his advisors have ever said such a thing. And of course Gillmor never claimed they did. Technically.

If large numbers of Americans think the hijackers were Iraqi -- and that's a pretty big if, given that one poll many months ago claimed this result -- it's a tribute to the American educational system. I'll remember that the next time the Mercury News campaigns to raise my taxes for benefit of local schools.