Lovely, tart little piece by Gerard Baker on the troubles at the Beeb. Money quote:
The Hutton Report was, to read the British media, the Night of the Long Knives, the bonfire of the vanities, and the Cultural Revolution all rolled into one hideous assault on cherished press liberty.
If you live in the fantasy world of self-adulation and preening pomposity of high-powered liberal journalists, I suppose the aftermath of the Hutton Report might seem like that. But for those who have to toil in the less sensational world of reality, the unassuming 72-year-old peer may just have done the world one of the greatest services in the history of journalism and public broadcasting.
Yeah. They may have to get back to objective reporting.
THE VATICAN ON GENOCIDE: Are they talking about Saddam’s record? Nuh-huh. At a Vatican news conference, a Jesuit priest accuses Western drug companies of “genocidal action” because of disparities in treatment between Africa and the West. Memo to Rome: people who create life-saving medicines should not be compared to people who murder millions.
MORE ON SPENDING: Check out Spinsanity’s take on the president’s defense of his massive increase in discretionary spending. It’s not encouraging. Broadly speaking, the records of Bush and Clinton are starkly different. Clinton was the fiscal conservative (thanks, partly to an ornery Republican Congress). Bush is clearly a fiscal liberal (aided and abetted by a pork-loving Republican Congress). This graph tells you a lot. I don’t think it’s disputable that what the president said on “Meet The Press” was therefore untrue both in letter and spirit. He said:
If you look at the appropriations bills that were passed under my watch, in the last year of President Clinton, discretionary spending was up 15 percent, and ours have steadily declined.
Here is the truth. The rates of growth of all discretionary spending are as follows: 2000: 7.5 percent; 2001: 5.6 percent; 2002 (Bush’s first real year): 13.1 percent; 2003: 12.4 percent. Now I think the president meant discretionary spending apart from defense and homeland security. There, the administration deserves credit for what appears to be a slow decline in the rate of growth, from its 2002 height. So where does the 15 percent of Clinton’s last year come from? There you can see that Bush is repeating the Josh Bolten spin about what the administration intended to spend, but not what it actually spent. Lie is too strong a word for this. But no honest person could describe those figures as Bush’s or Clinton’s actual record. Spinsanity calls it: “misleading.” I’d simply call it “culpable negligence.” Bush is also ignoring the looming social security crisis, his own Medicare bill, and the Alternative Minimum Tax chimera. Tim Noah is right to point out that this level of deception is aimed primarily at fiscal conservatives. When an administration starts spinning untruths to its own supporters, it’s in trouble.
The Dish 