A report in the current New Yorker on the Murdoch scandal explains how reporters are in the scandal-laundering business: “Bradley Manning is a traitor, but Nick Davies, of the Guardian (who received Manning’s ‘war logs’ from WikiLeaks), is a patriot, and Julian Assange occupies some nebulous in-between zone. Prosecutors who use search warrants to pry into politicians’ personal lives and then leak their findings before filing any charges are sleazy. Journalists who publish transcripts of Eliot Spitzer’s text messages to a prostitution service are models of professionalism. Ritual sanctification is assumed to take place at the moment when questionably obtained information passes into the hands of a reporter.”

He adds, with delicious understatement, “This is a little facile.”