The gravest indictment of the American news media is that George W. Bush has gutted the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Charter - yet this extraordinary story does not lead the nation’s newspapers and the evening news every day.

That’s according to Robert Parry at ConsortiumNews.Com, that is…

As galling as it may be for some readers to see how major mainstream media outlets are framing the Alito confirmation, the broader problem has been the failure of well-to-do liberals and progressive foundations to finance a media infrastructure that can act as a counterweight to the right-wing media machine, according to Robert Parry at ConsortiumNews.Com.

Needless to say again, here at The Locust Fork we agree…

Michael Olesker of the Baltimore Sun Is A Plagiarist? Who Isn’t?

At H.L. Mencken’s hometown newpaper, a liberal columnist named Michael Olesker was forced to resign recently over an alleged plagiarism flap for a few background paragraphs containing similarities to earlier reporting, - while he was in the middle of a legal fight with Maryland’s governor who refused to talk to him or anyone else at the paper.

David Simon, a Sun reporter from 1982 to 1995, author of Homicide and The Corner and the executive producer of HBO’s The Wire, responds in a column in the Baltimore City Paper making a reasoned case why the growing number of plagiarism cases against reporters is out of control and silly.

Is every journalist a plagiarist under today’s ethics rules?

We suspect it has more to do with the political war and the bottom line than plagiarism, especially since the courts could care less if book authors copy from journalists for their work all the time. All the more reason to blog, baby, blog . . . no editor or publisher or governor can tell us to shut up, although just wait until Judge Roy Moore tries to ignore our questions in the governor’s race.

He kicked me out of one press conference because I was not on the official invitee list. I could have made news myself that day, but headed for the beach, the golf course and then New Orleans instead. Next time, I will make news.

The news is a bit slow for a Monday and there’s not much to blog about, so there was time to check in on Press Think, where a discussion is brewing on the subject of “Things I Used to Teach That I No Longer Believe”.

Having nothing much better to do in the Dog Day heat except hunker in the bunker and watch cable news, here’s the link to my first comment on the subject. If you are into journalism and academic esoteria, check it out.

If not, send us a comment on another subject and maybe we’ll get something going.

Blog Note: You may notice a new blog link down the right hand side of this page for a new blog called Perpetual Notions. There’s not much to report about the new blog yet, except that it is a start on the first new blog by a new author on The Locust Fork site. Ron Sitton will be blogging from Arkansas in that space. We will use anything earth shattering on the front page here, but check out the new kid on the block from time to time. We have plans for other bloggers to join us down the road to provide more variety - and give the cranky old editor and publisher a break from time to time.

Now that the Karl Rove scandal and the Bush Supreme Court controvery have calmed down a bit, and the shuttle Discovery has launched successfully with no apparent deadly flaws, we can safely turn to a bit of blogging about the state of American journalism.

Over at my favorite blog on the press, NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen has launched another succussful discussion about the state of “the business,” or alternatively “the craft” of journalism.

To read my contribution to the discussion, just hit this permalink.

And since it is Tuesday, we are getting ready for more Locust Fork Radio action on Wednesday.

What will the Professor and the Doc come up with next?