Moynihan Rule

Jonah Goldberg has a good article on how fearful the MSM currently are to speak "truth to POLITICALLY CORRECT power." Recently, I cited a couple of Moynihan Rules with regard to journalists:

"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."

And more on point with Jonah's article, here is a recent lucubration from my midnight pen:

Daniel Patrick Moynihan once noted that the cowards in the US media routinely cower before nasty dictators---much more craven than the brave young Elenas, Anastasias, and other investigative journalists in Russia and other press-hounding places, which thus get favorable press [Iran, e.g.] because, as Moynihan noted, US columnists and reporters lash out with impunity on honorable gentlemen like George W. Bush, aware they are unaccountable for their hectoring libelous exaggerations. Moynihan noted their reticence in cases where their own careers or reputation or hides might be in jeopardy.

So murderers like Putin and Amadinnerjacket get fawning kowtows from the likes of Christiane Amanpour while GWB & Tony Blair are excoriated by moral retards and physical cowards who know that they can lie with impunity and that in the boardrooms of the NYT and WaPo, ideology trumps truth in making a "journalist's" career.

To call journalists cowards and hacks and obsequious kow-towing butt-kissers isn't enough however, as they are exceeding their brief in a two-fold manner, not only inventing their own facts, but screeching about freedom of the press:

Serial fraud Jane Hamsher quotes "rudderless" Daily Kos "Polls" which are about as biased and unprofessional as the rest of DailyKos's flawed product.

My daughter is taking a course in polling in an uppergrad Poli Sci course at UMiami [whose Poli Sci Dept is led, informally, by Donna Shalala] and tells me each week how she is learning more about how polls can be skewed and positioned to get the response desired.

Frauds like Hamsher and Moulitsas are only the most extreme examples of how Moynihan's dictum about "inventing facts" is becoming an art form on the nihilistic left.