And speaking of the presstitutes

Liberal war wonks dissect news

It has been billed as a "post-mortem," but it sounds more like a broken record. Fifty mostly liberal journalists and foreign-policy wonks have clustered at the University of California at Berkeley to analyze media coverage of the Iraq war, a year after the fact.

A perfect choice of location.

The three-day conference is fixated on the idea that the embedded press compromised journalistic credibility and independence last year through wartime coverage that was supportive of Bush administration policy and patriotic in tone.

Organizers have made the trend sound more like a syndrome, saying they intend to dissect "the psychological pressures of embeddedness and where patriotism ends or should end and the independence of the press begins."

Tell it to Ernie Pyle.

The dean of Berkeley's journalism school, Orville Schell, said: "Getting coverage from embedded reporters is like looking into a microscope. What we need is the broader picture."

Sounds like Orville is one of those "hotel bar" reporters who like to tell us "what things really mean".

Berkeley's version of the broader picture includes a sold-out discussion this evening between CNN's Christiane Amanpour and former United Nations chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, who has adopted a second career as a Bush basher with a new book to sell.

Be still, my heart!

Nothing like more wanking from the usual crew of limp appendages. And it is the usual crew:

The Berkeley forum which ends tomorrow night has its own bias . Speakers include representatives from CNN, National Public Radio, PBS, Al Jazeera, ABC, CBS and the BBC, but no one from the Fox News Channel.

The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times are represented, but not the Wall Street Journal or The Washington Times.

Where's Pilger and Fisk?