They do feel shame

There is a hopelessly convoluted row taking place between James Taranto, who writes the Best of the Web column on the Wall Street Journal editorial page's online site, OpinionJournal, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Media Watch program. If you're really looking to waste time, you can go to today's update on OpinionJournal and try to follow along. We'll do our best at a subjective synopsis.

Part of the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy's view of news from Iraq is that there must be either good news, or no news at all. We're not kidding. And to promote that, OpinionJournal has hosted a fortnightly item consisting entirely of "good news from Iraq" assembled by Aussie blogger Arthur Chrenkoff. It's safe to assume that Wednesday's 72 person civilian death toll doesn't make this roundup, although the Cessna scare at the White House did a nice job of keeping that item lower down in the headlines anyway.

The Media Watch team was trying to establish the exact relationship between the series and the Wall Street Journal, but couldn't get any of their calls returned. Given some of the inflammatory items that have aired in Taranto's column over the years (e.g. this one, scroll down to end), we're not surprised that the more PR-sensitive Dow Jones types might be embarrassed to go into it. It was this difficulty in pinning down the link between "good news from Iraq" and the WSJ that got the argument going.

And given the current fuss about blogger ethics, there is an additional revelation. Chrenkoff is described as a blogger**. But his contribution for OpinionJournal is (a) remunerated, and (b) edited:

Media Watch: Do they pay you?

Arthur Chrenkoff: They do actually--a pretty insignificant amount--I started doing it for free but they suggested they might pay me a rather a nominal amount. It's certainly not in line with what is paid for opinion pieces. . . . I do apologize, with hindsight I should have told you the truth. As I said I was a bit taken aback. I didn't see how it was relevant to the story but having said that I do apologize.

MW: What about editing. Do they edit your pieces?

AC: I told you they didn't edit it because to my mind editing means to make substantial changes, but they do have a look at it before they publish it.

As his answers make clear, Chrenkoff was sufficiently sensitive about these aspects to have initially denied them. Besides the lack of disclosure of the remuneration, does the editing represent a reluctance to take the risk that even the good news from Iraq might not be good enough?

UPDATE 13 MAY: Since we learned from the above that Chrenkoff's "good news from Iraq" is a series propagated by the Iraq War boosters at the Wall Street Journal, why does the New York Times see fit to put essentially the same material on Friday's op-ed page (alt. link here)?

**2nd UPDATE 16 MAY: For completeness, here's a link to a typical "Good News from Iraq" piece on OpinionJournal. Note the brief bio: Mr. Chrenkoff is an Australian blogger. He writes at chrenkoff.blogspot.com.