Eugene McCarthy once remarked, with characteristic wryness, that the press was “. . . a little like the blackbirds in the fall. One flies off the telephone line, and the others fly away; and the other one comes back and sits down, and they all circle and they come down and sit in a row again.”
Mr. McCarthy provides an all-too-accurate approximation of the media’s ordinary, unexceptional performance— or so if: seems to me after something like twenty years in the business. Indeed, this urge to flock is among the more conspicuous features of the frequently wayward press, one that is instantly apparent even to newcomers among us.
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