Ignoble Idiocy at the PNJ

Piss poor.

This is the best description of the quality of editorial journalism at the Pensacola News Journal.

Carl Wernike and Reginald Dogan are barely literate and sometimes incoherent. The slap-dash prose they churn out daily is so poor that any reasonably demanding English teacher would find it unacceptable. Mark O'Brien is clearly the most talented writer on the staff.

Witty and thoughtful, Mark too is guilty at times, not simply of profound ignorance but "merely" of sloppy journalism - he tends to beg the question - asking us to accept as truth that which a reasonable person would find under contention, at the very least. Mark, in short, is too lazy to explain himself, suffice as it is to simply adopt unexamined popular conventional wisdom. It's certainly very fashionable.

To his credit, Reginald doesn't cop a ridiculous pretense of objectivity. Reginald is the personification of agenda driven journalism.

Troy Moon is a worthless pacifist. He doesn't think war solves anything. I read his blog looking for a sign of intelligence. Nothing there except opinions about music. Who cares? Troy does, apparently. On the rare occasion when Troy does allude to George Bush or the war in Iraq, it is only indirectly - the implication being that readers don't really want to know what he thinks - the horrible truth he would lay out would simply be too awful to bear. He's doing us a favor, you see?

Daily editorials at the PNJ slam the point home to anyone who bothers to read them - that its editors are ignorant of: history, politics, philosophy, science, government and economics. Other than that, these are erudite, sophisticated journalists.

I found it very revealing one day recently to speak on the phone with Carl and Reginald. Carl's first response to disagreement was a disparaging "You don't just watch Fox News, do you?" Another memorable response was when Carl told me that it was the PNJ Editoral Board's "position" that drilling for oil be prohibited along the Florida coastline. He was clearly in no mood to defend it, suffice as it was to simply tell me it was their "position".

Reginald was very defensive - comically so. His responses were constrained and curt. I felt like a lawyer cross-examining a hostile witness. It being apparent that Reginald was uncomfortable explaining himself, the interogatory was rather short. Several months ago, a seperate discussion forum on the PNJ website was created under his name so that Reginald could respond to reader questions. He never even bothered. These gentlemen are clearly not used to being questioned or criticized.

In its totality, this behavior leaves the unmistakable impression that these journalists are more concerned with popularity than with factual, objective journalism. They behave like politicians. Not really concerned with truth, they closely follow the prevailing winds of conventional wisdom among the left- from the idiocy of Global Warming to the notion that the war in Iraq is "a problem created by George Bush."

*Revised to remove the f-bombs.