> have any proximity to "corridors of power" or political patrons or any sort of power This is a picky comment, but I think it's important to distinguish "prox

> have any proximity to "corridors of power" or political patrons or any sort of power This is a picky comment, but I think it's important to distinguish "proximity to power" from "holding power". There are a lot of journalists with proximity to power, some of them doing a serious disservice to the public because of that proximity. A false story like Iraqi yellowcake uranium was peddled by high-profile, respectable journalists because they had and relied on proximity to power. But it didn't give them power, it just made them a mouthpiece. Which doesn't make the preceding commenter right, that's still wildly off-base. I just wanted to note that the journalists close to power rarely have it, and the journalists with real power are rarer and tend to lack proximity to political power. They do exist - Murrow and Woodward for good, Hearst for ill - but most of them only have it for a moment. (And yes, Skin in the Game is unbearable. Reading the pre-release excerpts felt like hiking through egomaniacal mud, and I'm not likely to try the whole book.)