ABC News President David Westin suffered a pang of professionalism in an address at the Harvard University’s Institute of Politics last night.
Harvard Crimson:

“The more time we express our opinions, the less time we have to talk about the facts,” Westin said. “Unfortunately, opinion is driving out facts too often in most of what we see on television today.”
[…]
“It can be very entertaining to have two very spirited people discussing heath care in this country, but I for one would be better benefited by someone coming on and telling me exactly what the state of health care is before we talk about what ought to be done and telling me what my real options are,” Westin said.
In addition to the danger of having too much opinion, news media face the danger of the blurring between fact and opinion, he said.
“If viewers see news people on different channels that look pretty much the same, on sets that look pretty much the same, and graphics that look pretty much the same, with some expressing opinion some of the time and some expressing facts, is it surprising that the audience believe that they’re all expressing facts?” Westin asked.

Via Drudge.

When this Herald-Palladium item by Anna Clark floated up on Drudge a couple of days ago, I wondered why it didn’t create a news frenzy. Perhaps others noticed, as I did, that the word “wrong” in Clark’s report had been wrestled down to a single word quote.
Tenet: CIA made errors

Tenet called the war on Iraq “wrong” in a speech Wednesday night to 2,000 members of The Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan at Lake Michigan College’s Mendel Center. He did not elaborate.

Today, the Herald-Palladium offers this “clarification”;

Former CIA Director George Tenet told the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan on Wednesday that the United States was wrong on its pre-war intelligence in Iraq, but an article in Thursday’s Herald-Palladium may have put the comment in an incorrect context.
The story said Tenet called the war in Iraq “wrong.” However, after reviewing the reporter’s notes (Tenet barred reporters from using tape recorders), the newspaper now believes Tenet used the word “wrong” in the context of U.S. intelligence, not on the direct question of whether the United States should be in Iraq.

To their credit, I don’t think the original story has been airbrushed (yet), but they should really add this disclaimer to the original online item.

Roger Simon reviews Stolen Honor.

The movie consists of interviews with now gray or graying men who were incarcerated and tortured in the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War. Their stories are juxtaposed with the testimony of John Kerry at the Winter Soldier hearings. Despite the quality of the filmmaking, and my poor viewing conditions, I was deeply disturbed while watching this. It is not a “filmic” experience in the traditional sense. While viewing this movie, I imagine most of my generation find themselves reviewing themselves and their actions at the time rather than the film. I am far from resolving my view of Vietnam, although I still tend to think it was the wrong war. But the behavior of some factions of the antiwar side, factions which I fully supported then, were clearly out of line and as reprehensible as the war they wished to protest and central among those was Winter Soldier.
Some reviewers, like the NYT’s Alessandra Stanley, made light of the testimony of John Kerry before those hearings as something we heave “heard before” and therefore of little importance, preferring to focus on the unresolved pain of the former prisoners. But the fact that we have heard at least some of Kerry’s testimony before is beside the point. The testimony has never been explained. Kerry lied about his fellow soldiers in a serious and, it seems evident, conscious manner, going so far as to say they cut off peoples’ ears, raped and pillaged like Genghis Khan. Even given the passions of the time, this defamation is hard to explain. No wonder the Democratic Party wants us to look away. I wanted to look away. It is hard to conceive someone of so little moral compass is going to lead us in a time of war. Still, I suppose I could forgive Kerry if he had apologized for this in full as the recklessness of youth. But until now he hasn’t. The Democratic Party knows this too. That’s why they also want us to look away. It is over thirty years ago and therefore, they wish us to believe, beyond the statute of electoral limitations. No it’s not.

Wall Street Journal has more on the extraordinary pressure placed on Sinclair to pull this documentary.