Cravenly conformist?

"Far from being 'feral beasts', to use Tony Blair's phrase, the British media are overly respectful of authority. Newspapers and broadcasters tend to be suspicious of those who do not play the game ... ".

So writes John Kampfner in The Independent about Assange and the latest Wikileaks coup.

I would not have used the words "overly respectful" though, as that does not get close to the phenomenon. A better phrase might be "cravenly conformist", but even that does not really capture the essence of the beast. The closest I get is here with the discovery that:

News reporting is not a matter of discovering and publishing facts. Rather it is a process of gathering accounts from a very limited number of approved sources, and stitching them together to provide a defensible narrative. Any relationship with actual events, much less the truth, is entirely coincidental - and usually accidental.

Once you understand that, everything falls into place.

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