Journalists, wherefore art thou?

In 1960 I cut my liberal, news-junkie eye teeth at the age of 13 on the likes of the Washington Post,confounding a conservative father born the same year as the new President.

As a young mother, still a card-carrying liberal, but no-longer starry-eyed my-country-is-right citizen, I marveled at "Woodward and Bernstein"'s exposure of a corrupt White House.

Once I had dreamed of being a member of that elite group - insiders, but not insiders, political journalists, who knew the movers and the shakers and reported on them, revealed the important machinations, told the pulbic the truth about their government (as opposed to the truth about the individual government officials) - journalists who recognized the difference between a break-end at the Democratic headquarters, not a semen stain on a dress.

And now, we have a government whose officials "leak" a false news story to the press (Sadam wanting to buy uranium in Africa given to Miller of the NY Times) and then different government officials (Rice, Cheney and Rumsfield) pointing fingers at the very same story validating their call to War.

Where is the hue and cry from the Fifth Estate. Even Woodward punits for Fox News. WTF is Bernstein? Are our journalistic souls left only to Arianna Huffington at
www.huffingtonpost.com or a badgering Chris Matthews on a rarely-watched MSNBC.

Where are the watchdogs of the press?
Where are the American people?
Oh, Thomas Jefferson - we have deserted your ideals.
We have a free press - but only for the government and not the govern.