The writer's comparison of George Will and Bill Kristol to Fisk (finding the previous two wanting, of course) is the most transparent of straw men. Fisk is, for all his faults, a war correspondent. Will and Kristol are columnists. They are supposed to be biased. Their function is different than Fisk's is supposed to be. Fisk claims to be reporting the "facts" as he sees them. That's the problem. He injects his personal biases into his reporting more than any reporter I know. It is not good enough to say, as the writer does:
Biased reporting trumps no reporting. Every time.
Bullshit. Please accept my apologies for the use of a barnyard epithet, but this is line of argument is a steaming pile of bull feces piled twenty feet high and half an acre wide.
Those clowns at the Texas Mercury don't share the same opinion as most Americans. If you're not going to be fair in your reporting, then you might as well find another line of work. Readers expect to read something by some one who endeavors to tell both sides of the story. Fisk accepted almost every lie the Pallies told, up to and including the Jenin "massacre" blood libel. His anti-American, pro-Jihadist reporting has consigned him to the Useful Idiot branch of Western Leftism. It is not enough to praise some fellow for his ability to get off his ass and go out and get a story if the story that comes back is the 21st Century answer to Jews poisoning wells.
Robert Fisk is both revolting and entertaining to read, as he is an individual who is in romantic embrace with the Arab world. However, his reporting has descended (if it ever could have) into the kind of anti-Semitic prattle best exemplified by Julius Streicher and the staff of the Volkishcer Beobachter.
Be Seeing You,
Chris