According to Journal staffers with knowledge of the situation, Mr. Simpson, who is based in Brussels, had been working for months on a story about government monitoring of the international banking system operated by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT. On June 22, Mr. Simpson was in Washington when a Treasury source tipped him that The Times would be publishing a piece on the subject, according to Journal sources. Mr. Simpson delayed a flight back to Belgium and raced to put out a piece on deadline, posting one online minutes after the Times story went out. The Journal, The Times, the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post all had SWIFT stories in the next day’s papers.
The wall between news and opinion has traditionally been a tall and sturdy one at The Journal—with missiles lobbed over it. The editorial side has never been afraid to pick its own facts to support its arguments, even if those facts conflict with the ones reported in the paper’s news columns. Nor has it been reluctant to attack Journal reporters for writing stories that disagreed with its editorial premises, as when it downplayed the Enron scandal while Journal reporters were documenting the corrupt energy giant’s downfall.“They’re wrong all the time. They lack credibility to the point that the emperor has no clothes,” said one staffer whose reporting has been at odds with an editorial crusade.
Someone else noticed that too…just today I was blown away by what the editorial page ran first, that the Supreme Court cares about terrorists more than they do our safety. The comparison was made with Europe (which is in flames as I write this, the entire continent) and how it’s only a matter of time before a miniature Koran is implanted into the spine of every American at birth…as is the case with every European child born today. Well, every country except Finland.
I get the Wall Street Journal for it’s reporting and the editorial columnists, who aren’t afraid to use big words and aren’t ashamed of being smarter than most of the readers. Aegis, the private security firm I wrote about a while back, that’s where I first learned about them, on the WSJ opinion section. The panel to the far left though…I’ll read it every time, and the bat-shit-crazy vibe can leave me shaking hours later…like when they commented on the Voting Rights Act and pointed out that white people are discriminated against at the polls all the time.
The amount of times what’s written on that left panel contradicts a column within the same section, let alone the news reporting, is many. Regardless, it’s a great way to spend a buck in the morning.