Two unrelated news items in the past week hint at a developing challenge to rational policymaking: First, there were the confusing accounts of what happened in Basra, Iraq. And second, there was The New York Times story that CBS is considering buying CNN's newsgathering so it won't need to gather some news itself.

The almost complete guesswork of what happened in Basra, and why, was the result of a lack of reasonably reliable reporting. As The Weekly Standard impeccably described the p ...

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