Phony journalism

In the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan writes about the latest incident of a phony story making it onto the pages of a reputable journal. This time it's the New Republic, which already was badly burned a decade ago by the Stephen Glass debacle.

This time it was a writer/private named Scott Thomas Beauchamp, who apparently made up a bunch of stuff about horrific misbehavior by his fellow U.S. troops in Iraq. This kind of editorial sloppiness does no favors to the anti-war cause or the credibility of journalism; the New Republic has proved to be a friend of neither. ("Fool me once, shame on you ...") Noonan makes some good points.