George Monbiot bores into the reporting (past and present) of the UK's David Rose, who seems to have a stellar record of getting big stories wrong. But Monbiot should have spread the blame around, because as Daniel Okrent noted in his own castigation of the NY Times' WMD coverage in the run-up to the Iraq war,
reporters do not put stories into the newspaper. Editors make assignments, accept articles for publication, pass them through various editing hands, place them on a schedule, determine where they will appear. Editors are also obliged to assign follow-up pieces when the facts remain mired in partisan quicksand.
The point being, if a guy like Rose has a history of screwing up, his editors--and the newspaper he works for--should be held just as accountable.
