Fisking fisk

In an incredibly good post at the already incredibly good Done With Mirrors, Callimachus fisks Fisk, does a general fisking of Katrina reporting, and then talks about how the Fisk doctrine -- "Who cares about the facts? I want to destroy the center? -- effectively destroys journalism:

There never was a golden age of American media, from an ethical point of view. Total objectivity is impossible -- Fisk is right that far. Only a god can see like that. But, like any moral virtue, it is meant as a goal, a steadfast purpose, a lodestar. Something you reach for, not a place where you claim to stand. You set your feet toward it, and it keeps you on the right path. There never was a golden age of American media. The newsies always embodied, more or less, the blind spots and passions of the wider society. But they did great work, and they wrote stories that did more than just eat away at truth like an acid. They could tell you a battle story, for instance, that included the grueling grunt work, the heroic moments, the tragedy of the carnage -- and the big picture. The purely negative reporter, a Fisk, obsessed with tearing down the powers that be and setting the world right to his vision, will never give you that final quality -- what was bought at the price of the sacrifice. For him, that's all a lie unless it serves his utopian ideal.

You should read the whole post. It's just excellent.