Hi.

In case you haven't heard, Frontline aired the first episode in their four part series on journalism on Feb. 13. The series is called "News War." The first episode was devoted to the Valerie Plame affair and traces the principal events and actors involved. The next installment of the series will be broadcast next Tuesday on PBS. I'm left with mixed feelings concerning what happened. It seems clear that journalists are currently relying far too heavily on anonymous sources. You can't read a story about national or international politics without running into, "An anonymous source said..."While this method of gaining information is obviously invaluable to journalists, it often leaves me with the impression that I'm not getting the full story. Concerning Miller herself, I'm not sure what to think. In the past, I've often thought that she acted as the administration's lackey. An argument raised in the show suggests that she may have chosen to go to prison for 2 reasons. 1) She was trying to make up for her bad reporting on WMD's and 2) she had no real source to protect and she was actually the source of the link. I'm not sure. In any case, the struggle between freedom of the press and the government's right to know is not an easy question to solve.

Hi,

I'm probably not the only person who was grossly disappointed by the President's State of the Union address. But at this point, I shouldn't be surprised. Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Bush still believes that victory in Iraq is possible. I don't understand why the press has adopted the White House's term "surge" when the correct word for Bush's proposal is "escalation." Although the President is chiefly to blame for the mess we're in, I have no doubt that if the press were doing a better job, we'd be a hell of lot better off.

Best,

D