Media=government=media?

Remember that oft-repeated grade school civics lesson about the importance of an independent press? In that light, I find this paragraph the most chilling piece of the Times' Libby-indictment "news analysis" this morning:

Because the case involves the intersection of politics and the press, the day sometimes had a hall-of-mirrors element. At one point, Mr. Cheney's onetime press secretary, Pete Williams of NBC News, asked Mr. Fitzgerald how the prosecutor could take the word of 'three reporters' (including his current bureau chief and boss, Tim Russert) 'versus the vice president's chief of staff,' with whom Mr. Williams served in the Pentagon when Mr. Cheney was secretary of defense in the first Bush administration.

We know from innumerable examples that Pete Williams' dual role is not an anomaly. Journalists and government officials trade jobs as often as lobbyists. Given that cozy relationship, only a credulous grade-schooler would believe that the mainstream media is in fact independent, that it actually provides us with a Fourth Estate any more. (Question for the historians: did it ever? Or is that golden age another myth as well?)

So where does the independent oversight come from?