World's dumbest columnist

Joseph Perkins widened his lead in the race for World's Dumbest Columnist with this entry, which appeared in today's Gazette. Perkins notes, accurately, that reporters rate low in public esteem for ethical standards. He then finds "prima facie" evidence of media bias in three recent Iraq stories:
1. The reporter who got a soldier to ask Donald Rumsfeld about vehicle armor.
2. The NBC correspondent who filmed an American soldier shooting an apparently wounded Iraqi.
3. The Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal.
Perkins acknowledges, as any journalist would, that all three of these are legitimate stories. Then he adds this odd but true sentence: "Indeed, when stories appear on the front pages of major dailies or air on the evening news offering decidedly negative assessments of America's prosecution of the war in Iraq, or reflecting badly upon this nation's men and women in uniform, many Americans wonder about the reporter's motivation."

The upshot being -- what? Reporters shouldn't do stories, no matter how legitimate, that might cause Americans to question our motivation? Even Perkins isn't willing to go that far. So he ends with this insipid drivel: "In many cases, if not most, the reporter may simply be calling it as he or she sees it. But in at least some cases, it seems, the reporter's story is driven by anti-war bias."

Oh. And what might Americans wonder about the motivation of columnists who write such pathetic crap? Only one conclusion is possible: Such writers are determined to lay claim to the title of World's Dumbest Columnist. But no one will catch Perkins.