The lessons of the Tom Ridge story for the traditional media

So Tom Ridge says the White House pressured him to issue terror alerts as a political tool. My reaction was "that's newsworthy, but, duh, we on the left were correct saying this years ago."

On the traditional media side, though, what would the reaction be? Here the left had long argued that the terror alerts were politicized, while nearly all traditional media treated that as a crazy claim (the most notable episode was in 2004, when Howard Dean made the assertion that the warnings were politicized, and was attacked in the media).

Rather than use this as a learning moment, some journos have actually dug in their heels and said they were right to be wrong -- that they were right to give the Administration the benefit of the doubt, and distrust those crazy left-wingers who just hated Bush. (This reminds me of Washington Post columnist David Ignatius's argument, in a 2004 column, that he and others were right to be wrong about Iraq's weapons. "In a sense, the media were victims of their own professionalism. Because there was little criticism of the war from prominent Democrats and foreign policy analysts, journalistic rules meant we shouldn't create a debate on our own." As Bob Sommerby commented in response, "We wonder if Woodward and Bernstein had heard of these rules—if they knew that journalists can’t report facts until the two parties have sent them a leaflet?")

Glenn Greenwald has a useful post expanding this matter beyond just the Tom Ridge case and the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder's sorry writing on it. Says Greenwald:

Throughout the Bush years, those who said demonstrably true things were continuously dismissed as fringe, conspiracy-driven leftist-losers: those who questioned whether Saddam really had WMDs; those who argued that the invasion of Iraq would lead to long-term military bases in that country; those who worried that warrantless eavesdropping and Patriot Act powers would lead to abuses; those who opposed the war in Afghanistan on the ground that it would be drag on for years with no resolution, etc. etc.

Having been proven right about all of those things hasn't changed perceptions any at all. As Ambinder's comments today reflect, the paramount unchangeable Beltway Truth is that those who distrust government claims are unSerious Fringe Leftist Losers. Even when they turn out to be right, they're still that. And no matter how many times journalists like Ambinder are proven wrong in "giv[ing] the government the benefit of some doubt, even having learned lessons about giving the government that benefit," they still continue to do it and believe it is the right and responsible thing to do.