Moyers delivers the goods. The Washington Press corps should wear hoods and sunglasses.

The hour and a half PBS special "Buying the War" was on this evening and well worth the time to watch. He essentially documents the manner in which the Washington Press Corps lay down and let the Bush administration walk all over them, while burying all questions and doubts by either not covering them, or by putting the assertions from the administration on the front page while occasionally reporting the contradictions deep inside the paper. TV simply never bothered with the contradictions and questions. They just put the administration spokes-liars on and let it go at that.

If you missed the TV show, the video is available here.

Then over at Salon today Glenn Greenwald goes after the same press for the way they accepted the lies the military told about Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman and trumpeted those lies as great stories about American heroes. both did well as soldiers, but the stories the Army put out in each case was a pack of lies designed to ... who knows what? Cover up a screw-up? Create another photogenic American hero?

Back to Moyers - he makes it clear that the one press organization in Washington that got the stories it covered right was Knight-Ridder. They repeatedly got the real story and published it. No major media organizations joined them, to their perpetual shame.

So I have a question. About a years ago the financial markets determined that Knight-Ridder was not making enough money, so they forced the company to find a buyer. An even smaller chain called McClatchy bought the Knight-Ridder chain out, and now has sold off a few of the previous Knight-Ridder newspapers. Was Knight-Ridder forced to sell itself off because it was out of step with the major media organizations? Was this a way the other media organizations punished Knight-Ridder and got control of them so they wouldn't show them up as they did in the run-up to the Iraq War?

I find it suspicious that the one news outlet that was out of step with the major news organizations and showed them up is the one that Wall Street forced to be sold off.