More on the Newsweek Meltdown

More great analysis of the situation over at Newsweek and the implications for the media at large:

James Lileks:

It's another hit for the Big Old Media, but this time it wasn't bloggers who brought them down. Web sites did not spring into action with technical drawings proving the aperture of pipes at Gitmo was too narrow to accommodate bound volumes. No blogger demolished the source's resume, because he's anonymous. No one even suggested that the Quran in question was mocked up in Microsoft Word. No, this was self-inflicted: an example of people trying to win a race by shooting themselves in the foot.

Marvin Olasky:

Is there a sickness at the heart of press liberalism that leads many journalists to want the Guantanamo story to be true? Given the way Islamofascists act, do these journalists have a death wish for themselves and Western civilization?

Michelle Malkin says it's not just Newsweek beating the drumbeat of failure in Iraq.

And James Taranto nails the issue (first item):

The press's power--its ability to influence events--is inherent in the practice of journalism; were it not, dictators would have no need to restrict press freedom. But the press's power, especially in a free society, rests on its credibility--that is, on the reader's trust that the press is telling the truth. When the press falls short of that trust, as Newsweek has done here, it diminishes its own power.

Exactly.