Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters writes that "It appears hell hath frozen over":

It appears hell hath frozen over, for a Newsweek contributing editor published an article Saturday extraordinarily critical of his magazine's cover story last week about "global-warming deniers" being funded by oil companies in an organized scam to thwart science.

In fact, Robert J. Samuelson accurately noted how "self-righteous indignation can undermine good journalism," and that this disgraceful article was "an object lesson of how viewing the world as ‘good guys vs. bad guys' can lead to a vast oversimplification of a messy story."

Fortunately, Samuelson was just getting warmed up (emphasis added throughout, h/t Marc Morano):

The story was a wonderful read, marred only by its being fundamentally misleading.

[...]

NEWSWEEK's "denial machine" is a peripheral and highly contrived story. NEWSWEEK implied, for example, that ExxonMobil used a think tank to pay academics to criticize global-warming science. Actually, this accusation was long ago discredited, and NEWSWEEK shouldn't have lent it respectability. (The company says it knew nothing of the global-warming grant, which involved issues of climate modeling. And its 2006 contribution to the think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, was small: $240,000 out of a $28 million budget.)

The alleged cabal's influence does not seem impressive. The mainstream media have generally been unsympathetic; they've treated global warming ominously. The first NEWSWEEK cover story in 1988 warned the greenhouse effect. danger: more hot summers ahead. A Time cover in 2006 was more alarmist: be worried, be very worried. Nor does public opinion seem much swayed. Although polls can be found to illustrate almost anything, the longest-running survey questions show a remarkable consistency. In 1989, Gallup found 63 percent of Americans worried "a great deal" or a "fair amount" about global warming; in 2007, 65 percent did.

Shocking. But, Samuelson wasn't finished:

But the overriding reality seems almost un-American: we simply don't have a solution for this problem. As we debate it, journalists should resist the temptation to portray global warming as a morality tale--as NEWSWEEK did--in which anyone who questions its gravity or proposed solutions may be ridiculed as a fool, a crank or an industry stooge. Dissent is, or should be, the lifeblood of a free society.

Indeed, Newsweek's choice for the White House in 2004 calls it the higest form of patriotism. But the National Enquirer-like tone of Newsweek's stories over the past few years calls into mind something that Steve Hayward has written about another Democrat, one who actually was in the White House 30 years ago:

Carter has a long habit of engaging in what was once described as “blurt and retreat,” whereby he backs away from egregious statements when called on them. Yet circumstantial evidence suggests that this language was not mere verbal sloppiness, as Carter now wishes us to think. At the end of one of Carter’s freelance Middle East peace conferences a few years ago, he let slip a comment that ranks up there with many racially tinged remarks from his various Georgia political campaigns: “Had I been elected to a second term, with the prestige and authority and influence and reputation I had in the region, we could have moved to a final solution.” It is strange that an experienced politician would use that particular expression. Carter’s secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, incautiously wrote years after leaving office that Carter’s Middle East plan in a prospective second term was simple: Sell out Israel.

It's only because of the Blogosphere that the latter half of the phrase "Blurt and Retreat" comes into play, and even then, it's all too rare; but the first half of the equation seems to be happening at an exponentially accelerating rate. With Newsweek, alone, since 2005, there was the above global warming story, plus:

Evan Thomas' recent admission that "The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong", in regards to Newsweek's coverage (and that of the MSM as a whole) of the Duke non-rape case.

Their January 2007 cover story blaming "American Occupation" and not the culture of the Middle East itself for creating "The Next Jihadists".

Christopher Dickey's 2006 innuendo titled "Hanging Judgments", in which he implied that Republicans should swing along with Saddam Hussein.

Their September 19 2005 cover calling Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath "A National Shame", even as Americans nationwide poured out millions in support of New Orleans and the other areas hit by Katrina.

Their "Koran in the can" debacle in 2005.

Their international edition that same year depicting an American flag in a garbage can as a result of the 2004 election.

You can sum all this up to a raging collective case of what James Piereson has dubbed "Punitive Liberalism", but as Piereson has tracked, it's a surprisingly recent, post-JFK phenomenon. But then, a lot's changed in journalism since World War II. In Power Line, recently former New York Times magazine editor turned Hollywood talent coordinator William Katz wrote:

Consider this statement:

"It is also true that The New York Times is not a crusading newspaper. It is impressed with the responsibility of what it prints. It is conservative and independent, and so far as possible -- consistent with honest journalism -- attempts to aid and support those who are charged with the responsibility of government. There are many newspapers conducted along different lines, some of them vicious, ill-natured, and destructive of character and reputation, and for mere purposes of sensation they frequently terrorize well qualified and well meaning men to the point where they are discouraged from accepting invitations to give their ability, genius, and experience to the administration of public affairs."

Those words were in a letter written in 1931 by Adolph Ochs, the publisher of The New York Times.

Can you imagine any publisher writing that today? Can you imagine a publisher who believes it's his duty to "aid and support those who are charged with the responsibility of government"? That publisher would be labeled "unsophisticated," blind to the "adversarial relationship," indifferent to the need to "speak truth to power." And, God knows, the man certainly doesn't want to "make a difference."

I was on The Times during the Vietnam War. I recall once going down to the newsroom, on the 3rd floor, to suggest a story on some problems at a military hospital. I was properly irate, as only someone with a fresh diploma could be. But Robert Alden, a legendary Times reporter, sat me down and quickly tempered my righteousness, recounting the history of military medicine, and the lives it had saved. He asked that I consider that background when suggesting my story. Can you imagine that today?

There have been many changes in journalism since World War II, but the most striking has come in the resumé of the journalist. Of course, there have always been college graduates in journalism. Even Ernie Pyle, the everyman reporter of World War II, had studied at Indiana. But what we've had in the last 50 years is a deluge of college graduates. They have brought some improvements. But they've also brought into journalism the culture, attitudes, and arrogance of the academic world.

I don't suggest that all was sublime before the sheepskins arrived. For every great paper of the past, there were twenty we'd like to forget. For every grand statement of Adolph Ochs, there were spectacles like a news photographer, in 1928, strapping a camera to his ankle and sneaking it into Sing Sing so readers of the New York Daily News could see Ruth Snyder electrocuted on the front page.

But there have been, especially since the sixties, disturbing trends in journalism. Just as Hollywood, in its hiring practices, has replaced talent with education, journalism is in danger of replacing experience with report cards. Journalism is not a profession. There is no specific body of knowledge required, and there is no licensing. What is needed is a sharp set of skills, high powers of observation, and a humility about how much we can understand quickly, and these come only from experience. But when you've gone through Yale or Stanford, when you've been told how smart you are, when you got 700s on your SATs, you start to believe what mom has whispered in your ear. You start to think that you "know." It's a kind of self-inflicted grade inflation. I'm bright, therefore I'm right.

The impact of this attitude has been profound. As reader Sparks said, there has been a separation between journalism and its audience, and I believe it derives directly from the separation between our universities and the nation. College graduates, especially from supposedly elite schools, see themselves as a class apart. They are encouraged to do so, especially by the sixties crowd that still patrols the hallowed halls. (Well, let's not say "patrols." It's so Marine-ish, my dears. )

I recall editing a story about the Soviet Union for The New York Times Magazine. It was written by a Canadian professor. I made my notes on his first draft, then waited for his second, which came in due course. As I read it, though, I realized something odd had happened. The professor had changed all his conclusions, making them more pro-Soviet. I called him, not hiding my annoyance. How, I asked, could a scholar flip all his opinions between the first and the second draft? His reply was direct. "You don't understand," he said, "peer pressure in universities."

Clearly, there's lots of peer pressure in the offices of the MSM as well; as Roger Ailes said in March:

"The greatest danger to journalism is a newsroom or a profession where everyone thinks alike. Because then one wrong turn can cause an entire news division to implode".

All too often though, it takes someone outside the Parliament of Clocks to catch the errors after they've been published.

Hence, the Blogosphere.

Update: Steve Boriss makes a number of exceptional points on Newsweek and Robert Samuelson's rebuttal. Rather than my quoting his entire post, read the whole thing here.