Of course Michael Yon’s work has been wonderful. But you really think that wins you the argument? All you did was prove my point: We rely on professional newsgatherers for what we know about the world. Michael Yon is a professional newsgatherer. He’s part of the very media system I’m describing.

I don’t know why the whole media thing is such a blind spot for my fellow conservatives. It’s the one arena where rational judgment and analysis seems to go out the window. For starters, “the media” isn’t monolithic or predestined. It’s simply an arbitrary collection of human beings who are out rounding up information about the world. You or I could easily have chosen to be one of them. “The media” wasn’t dishonest about Katrina — some number of those human beings were. You and I wouldn’t have been like that … yet we’d still be sitting here staring at the death of journalism.

And there’s another big (huge) mistake conservatives make in these discussions: viewing everything through the lens of politics. Most news isn’t political. That just happens to be your thing. It’s your frame on the world. And while there is certainly leftist bias in the political coverage at many major news outlets, political coverage simply isn’t the biggest thing that’s at stake here.

That’s why this is such a red herring: “the brokers of information are dishonest and corrupt.” Even granting that point, you’re referring to a small SLIVER of what will disappear with professional journalism’s demise. A train is running off the tracks, right into our own house, and all you can do is gleefully applaud because you always hated the way that one engineer wore his cap. It’s such a glaring, misguided focus.

As a conservative, I’m not unhappy, in some generic sense, about the end of left-wing bias. But I certainly never wanted its end to come because the whole, entire apparatus collapsed. It’s a baby/bathwater thing.