All The News That's Fit To Drink

Well, Nicky and I have been having a good hard look at the Fourth Estate this week and it has been found wanting.

First there was the rather unkind things they said about the redoubtable Mark Steyn.

Secondly there are the rather silly things said by a rather unsavoury character by the name of Bob Ellis.

Hat Tip to Tim Blair

Oh, how I long for the days of noble journalism - when it was more like His Girl Friday than Frontline.

On a more sober note we send our heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of brave journalist Steve Vincent. He was murdered in Iraq this week. It seemed he got too close to the truth about some of the Shia Muslim revenge killings of Sunni Muslims in Iraq.

His good blogosphere friend Arthur Chrenkoff has more details further in his blog.

We've also indulged in a little journalistic investigation, the results of which are Watching The (Media) Watchers.

I'm planning to write a piece over the weekend which makes the case for treating Multiculturalism as a dangerous brainwashing cult and I know Nicky isn't finished holding the media to account.

Phew, with all of this activity I think we need a drink - and we all know journalists can drink...

The Journalist Cocktail
60ml. Gin
1 tsp. Dry Vermouth
1 tsp. Sweet Vermouth
1 tsp. Triple Sec
1 tsp. Lime Juice
Dash Angostura Bitters

Combine ingredients in a shaker filled with ice, shake and strain into a chilled martini or cocktail glass.

And while you're enjoying your drink, ponder these words of wisdom about the noble career of newspaper man.

"A journalist is a person who has mistaken their calling." - Otto von Bismarck quotes (Prussian Prime Minister, Founder and Chancellor of the German Empire, 1815-1898)

"If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist." - novelist Norman Mailer

"The dominant and most deep-dyed trait of the journalist is his timorousness. Where the novelist fearlessly plunges into the water of self-exposure, the journalist stands trembling on the shore in his beach robe. The journalist confines himself to the clean, gentlemanly work of exposing the grieves and shames of others." - Janet Malcolm (American author and journalist on the staff of The New Yorker magazine)

If you think that's rough, Ms Malcolm goes on...

"Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse."

Maybe the last word should go to this famous Italian former journalist - Benito Mussolini: "For my part I prefer 50,000 rifles to 50,000 votes."

-- Nora