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I think it’s about time to stop complaining that the media isn’t doing a good job of asking questions. In the end, the American public may or may not care about the WMD issue — although I hope they do — but it’s definitely out there. You can tell the media is covering the story when John Dean asks if lying about the reason for a war is an impeachable offense. He thinks it is, unsurprisingly. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports doubts about those two trailers.

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This post is pretty old, but Dave Winer just linked back to it today and I picked up on something new; also, it ties in nicely to the recent discussion from the Dead Parrots, and if you aren’t reading the Parrots you ought to be. So, discussion ensues. Here’s the money quote from Dave:

OK, let’s deconstruct a myth. Someone says that weblogs aren’t journalism. OK, suppose a journalist has a weblog. When that journalist writes something on the weblog, therefore, it must not be journalism. Suppose the journalist writes exactly the same words on her weblog that she writes in a column in the newspaper she writes for. In one place it’s journalism and in the other it’s not? Hmmm.

Assuming we’re talking about a weblog with no editor, the answer is quite possibly yes. The logical fallacy is in the assumption that journalism is simply words. It’s not; it’s a process. It’s certainly possible to use that process in a weblog — c.f. Gizmodo, which is not precisely deep journalism but which qualifies nonetheless — but a weblog does not become journalism simply because it’s news-oriented.

Really, it’s about reputation capital. (ObWhuffie.) “Journalism” is shorthand for “the reputation capital built up by generations of reporters and editors who have made the unwritten bargain to live up to the standards of those who have gone before them.” Independent journalism is hard because the journalists don’t have the reputation backup of an editor. Some succeed, and some don’t.

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Despite the constant attempts to play down the looting of the Iraqi National Museum, the full story is coming out. It is fairly clear, at this point, that a whole bunch of items were missing. It’s also pretty clear that many of them were simply hidden for safekeeping.

The lesson? We owe the Iraqis a debt of thanks for preserving the heritage of Iraq, since we were too busy to do so.