Comment is free, facts are extremely expensive

I agree with Garance that there’s lots of interest in Bill Keller’s Hugo Young lecture. And like her I was struck by this passage:

The New York Times has six correspondents assigned to Iraq, plus a rotating cast of photographers, plus Pentagon correspondents who regularly travel with the troops. We employ, in addition, about 80 brave Iraqis – many of them handpicked stringers based in towns that are no longer safe for westerners. Sustaining the Baghdad bureau costs several million dollars a year. We take extraordinary precautions to keep our people safe, but two of our Iraqi colleagues have been murdered in cold blood, almost certainly because they worked for an American organisation. There are lots and lots of places you can go for opinions about the war, but there are few places, and fewer by the day, where you can go to find honest, on-the-scene reporting about what is happening.