Last refuge of scoundrels/journalists

You know a paper has published something wholly irresponsible when it starts wrapping itself in the First Ammendment, complete with Descarte and Voltaire citations.

Notes to Ithaca Journal:

1) Nobody ever questioned your constitutional right to publish anything — including a mendacious anti-Israel diatribe disguised as an enlightened Mother’s Day greeting. The issue is not legality — it’s the absurdity of that juxtoposition, the patent falsities within Wold’s piece, and the credibility of your paper. See Daniel Okrent’s first item.

2) You mention one criterion of inadmissable op-ed material that Wold’s piece does violate: “writers cannot make a factual claim that is verifiably false.” It is verifiably false that Israel is responsible for ‘slaughter of the Palestinians’, as Wold claims.

Here’s a dead white man quote right back at you — Samuel Johnson quipped that “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Well, constitutional protection is the last refuge of irresponsible journalism.

More thoughts on this at Mediacrity.

See letters from HR subscribers on the Ithaca Journal’s letters page.