Thursday, February 09, 2006

I Agree With Jonah Goldberg

What a horrible thing to have to write. But he does address one of my pet peeves - the unbalanced roundtable. More generally I don't think journalists should be on roundtables at all! What's the point of putting people who aren't really supposed to have opinions in a format where they're supposed to express opinions. As I've written before all they're capable of doing is recycling conventional wisdom which may or may not really be true. It's made worse by the pairing of journalists and pundits/operatives, but even without that it's just a ridiculous format for reporters to participate in.

I think it's great when journalists, say, go on CNN to discuss a particular news story they've written, but they degrade their craft and confuse people about what they're supposed to be doing when they position themselves as something they claim not to be - pundits.