Transparency: "You can't handle the truth..."

Jeff Jarvis blogs from a media conference up at UMass today. He gives us the scoop on Helen Thomas, long time Whitehouse press corp member and author of "Watchdogs of Democracy? : The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public". He runs down her opening remarks:

...I’m not sure why. She dives right into her screed: “I never felt before that our country is as rudderless, leaderless as it is now.” Follow with litany of privacy fears, “the fear card,” WMDs, and “that groveling, Republican-controlled Congress.”

Well, I suppose it’s an interesting beginning to a journalism conference in the new age when objectivity is dead. We are, indeed, watching its obit.

But it’s also interesting that the woman who has thrown lighter fluid on the embers of her career with opinion and advocacy now also tries to keep others out of her game: “Everyone with a laptop thinks they are a journalist. The problem is that anything goes. There are no basic standards about what’s accurate and the truth…. Bloggers are not necessarily journalists.”

Another journalism icon pissed off about losing her previously unchecked power to editorialize her particular bias. The idea of transparency in reporting is completely lost on this pompous crust. Why don't you retire already and share some tea and crumpets with Dan Rather you old bat!