An interesting contrast for those who aren't as privleged as Woodward and the Washington Post are in terms of access to those in power, from today's Boston Globe:

THE MEDIA

Pentagon drawing battle lines with press


By Mark Jurkowitz, Globe Staff, 11/20/2002

WASHINGTON - When Army Times writer Sean Naylor linked up with the 101st Airborne Division in Kandahar to cover the Afghanistan fighting, he found that instead of the traditional practice of being housed with the troops, reporters were ''quarantined'' in media tents. During USA Today reporter Andrea Stone's visits to Guantanamo, Cuba, she was never even allowed within shouting distance of the US-held detainees. And although he was traveling with US forces, San Diego Union-Tribune reporter James Crawley had to scan transcripts of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's Washington briefings to glean any hint of information about the Afghan war-related mission he was covering.

''People on the ship wanted to talk about it,'' he said. But ''everything was directed from the Pentagon. What do we need to do about it next time?''

That question was a rallying cry for the more than 100 journalists - many of them veterans of conflicts from Kosovo to Afghanistan - who gathered here last week for a conference sponsored by the two-month-old organization Military Reporters & Editors. With a potential war in Iraq on the horizon, the answer they heard was not reassuring. Given Afghanistan as an object lesson, the consensus was that Rumsfeld's Pentagon has taken the art of information control to new heights. And that isn't likely to change in any battle for Baghdad. (Although keynote speaker Bob Woodward of the Washington Post offered the distinctly dissenting view that there was no more than a 50-50 chance of conflict.)

Remainder of this very revealing article can be found here:

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/324/living/Pentagon_drawing_battle_lines_with_press+.shtml

Sort of begs the question, what has Woodward been told by Bush administration "war cabinet principals" that the rest of the media covering the military and the war on Iraq haven't been?

Again--the problem is the journalists with the most clout with the power mongers are the ones telling the stories to us. They aren't serving the public interest, they are serving the interests of their political masters who grant them access, privleging them above all others. That is why Woodward's supposed expose of the the Iran Contra affair was a joke. Just not a funny one.

And really, who ever did believe that lame claim to the Casey deathbed confession?