Posting to the Columbia Journalism Review's Behind the News blog, Megan Garber (5/26/09) catches New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt espousing "a peculiar brand of institutional defensiveness" in his May 23 column:

One that plays itself out via divisiveness--and via, in particular, a false dichotomy that aggrandizes Times reporters and dismisses those who are not. In particular, those nagging, nattering bloggers. (Outsiders! Pouncers! Rougher-uppers!) And he does so right in his lede: There are those "within" the Times, "trying to protect the paper's integrity"…and then there are those "outside" it, "ready to pounce on transgressions by Times journalists."

Garber contention that "such thinking represents all too well the protective, entitled, wagon-circling attitude that so many people resent about the Times--and about mainstream journalism more generally"--even comes after choosing to "leave aside the fact that Hoyt's column vastly underplays the transgressions in question within it":

MoDowd’s, in particular. (After a quick, he-said/she-said summary of the scandal, Hoyt declares: "I do not think Dowd plagiarized, but I also do not think what she did was right.... If the words are not hers, she must give credit." And then he moves on.)

For the record, even Dowd herself admits having lifted lines wholesale from Talking Points Memo blogger Josh Marshall.

The Rasmussen poll has been criticized for putting a right-wing skew on its questions--a strategy that helps Scott Rasmussen garner frequent appearances on Fox News and the like, but severely diminishes its usefulness as a guide to public opinion.

The latest example of Rasmussen's tilt is particularly tendentious: "How important is it to you that the dollar remain the currency of the United States?" the pollster asked (3/29-30/09), finding 70 percent saying it was "very important" and 88 percent saying at least "somewhat important."

Needless to say, there are no plans to replace the dollar as the currency of the United States--what there is, however, is China's suggestion that a new currency be created for international trading purposes, and an attempt by some on the right (notably Rep. Michele Bachmann) to scare people into thinking that the New World Order is coming to take their dollars away.

The striking thing is that Rasmussen appears to know there are no such plans. "I was really curious where the suspicion level was going to be on this particular question," he told Talking Points Memo (4/31/09). "If the idea got around that this meant replacing the currency in your wallet," he added, "then absolutely there would be support building for protecting the dollar." He seems to be saying that he was testing out how people would respond to misleading scare tactics--and, in the process, furthering those scare tactics himself.