A few weeks ago, MSNBC's First Read had an item questioning whether President Obama "knows too much" about healthcare policy. The piece complained that the president is willing to offer Americans details about reform....

The Wall Street Journal's Jonathan Weisman raised a similar concern today, arguing that Obama cares too much about policy details....

This, apparently, is criticism, not praise. The president who inherited a devastating economic crisis is interested in U6 numbers--a measure that includes the unemployed, those who are working part-time but want full-time employment, and those who've simply given up--and this, we're told, is somehow evidence of excessive interest in detail.

Benen thinks that too-skeptical-for-the-Washington Post Dan Froomkin "has this just right" when writing that "there are all sorts of legitimate reasons to be concerned about Obama's approach to governing" but "intellectual curiosity is one thing journalists in particular should celebrate, not sneer at."

In Benen's closing thoughts he really "can't help but wonder if" reporters might simply "prefer a more superficial president because they have a more superficial perspective?"

Alexander quoted with a straight face Post columnist Gene Weingarten questioning whether Froomkin "was as informed and qualified to opine as people who had been actively covering the White House for years." Alexander did not point out that Weingarten writes a humor column, which might have helped readers put into context an otherwise inexplicable claim.

In the days and weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks, the nation, including the media, vested him with abilities he didn't have and credibility he didn't deserve.... How did the media cover it all? Not well. Reading pretty much everything that was written about Bush on a daily basis, as I did, one could certainly see the major themes emerging. But by and large, mainstream-media journalism missed the real Bush story for way too long. The handful of people who did exceptional investigative reporting during this era really deserve our gratitude: People such as Ron Suskind, Seymour Hersh, Jane Mayer, Murray Waas, Michael Massing, Mark Danner, Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau (better late than never), Dana Priest, Walter Pincus, Charlie Savage and Philippe Sands; there was also some fine investigative blogging over at Talking Points Memo and by Marcy Wheeler. Notably not on this list: The likes of Bob Woodward and Tim Russert. Hopefully, the next time the nation faces a grave national security crisis, we will listen to the people who were right, not the people who were wrong, and heed those who reported the truth, not those who served as stenographers to liars.

Read of some other journalists worth mentioning in this regard in the FAIR magazine Extra!: "Wrong on Iraq? Not Everyone: Four in the Mainstream Media Who Got It Right" (3–4/06) by Steve Rendall.

One of the bright spots at the Washington Post media enterprise was Dan Froomkin's column, "White House Watch," for WashingtonPost.com.  It often struck us that Froomkin had a whole different attitude--skeptical of those in power, and critical of their journalistic enablers--than most of his colleagues at the Post Co. So it was perhaps not too surprising to hear that Froomkin, one of the Post's most popular online writers, had been fired--not long after his column was placed under the authority of editorial page editor Fred Hiatt, who's one of the journalists who best exemplifies the Post's dominant ethic of service to authority.

Those who had accepted the premise that the purpose of journalism was to advance the agenda of official Washington were understandably resentful of Froomkin, who was a constant reminder that that was not, in fact, the only way to report the news.  Post ombud Deborah Howell wrote a column back in 2005  complaining that Froomkin was "highly opinionated and liberal"--hilariously quoting the Post's then-national political editor John Harris as saying that Froomkin's column "dilutes our only asset--our credibility."

Let's be clear--it's not that they don't like you injecting opinion into the news at the Washington Post; in fact, they do that so much that economist Dean Baker refers to them as "Fox on 15th Street." But they have to be the right opinions--if, like Post columnist Dana Milbank, you think single-payer advocates are pathetic and ridiculous, that's an opinion the Post Co. is happy to showcase.  If your opinion is, like Froomkin's, that torture performed by the U.S. government ought to be called "torture," well, that might be putting at risk what the Washington Post calls "credibility."

I was struck in writing this item by what I couldn't do, which is quote Froomkin's powerful statement about the importance of journalists pointing out when officials aren't telling the truth--because Froomkin repeatedly refers to this key journalistic function as "calling bullshit"--and if we had quoted that on the air, the stations that run our show would risk being fined by the FCC.  (I could have translated that to "calling BS," but somehow euphemizing Froomkin's unvarnished call for journalistic forthrightness didn't feel right.)  Just a reminder that the petty censorship policies of the FCC do have political consequences.