Actually, a bunch of us who have been severely critical of Tim Rutten are probably kind of awestruck by his column today in the L.A. Times.

Lebanon photos: Take a closer look

THE controversy this week over Reuters’ distribution of digitally manipulated, falsely labeled and — probably — staged photos of the fighting in Lebanon hasn’t been nearly as large as it should have been.

Holy cow.

Rutten is the man who I criticized for thinking of the journalistic profession as a priesthood.

He said:

There is a certain kind of bright but brittle mind that loves this sort of either/or thinking. What such minds cannot accept is the common-sensical notion that real life — including that of the press — is lived mostly in the pragmatic middle. There, experience has demonstrated that intellectual rigor and emotional self-discipline enable journalists to gather and report facts with an impartiality that — though sometimes imperfect — is good enough to serve the public’s interest in the generality of cases.

I said:

Rutten seems to have missed that whole Reformation thing; the notion that truth might not have to be derived from a priesthood – and make no mistake, when he starts talking about ‘intellectual rigor and emotional self-discipline ,’ he’s talking about a priesthood – is something that went by the wayside in Western society a number of years ago. Frighteningly, it appears to be coming back.

Today, I tip my hat to him. Not because he said something that supports position I’ve taken (although that’s nice), but because he’s willing to publicly complain about this:

There are, however, two problems here, and they’re the reason this controversy shouldn’t be allowed to sputter to its inglorious conclusion just yet: One of these has to do with the scope of what strongly appears to be wider fabrication in the photojournalism Reuters and other news agencies are obtaining from their freelancers in Lebanon. The other is the U.S. news media’s grudging response to the revelation of Hajj’s misconduct and its utter lack of interest in exploring whether his is a unique or representative case.

Thus far, only a handful of relatively brief stories on this affair have appeared in major American papers. The Times picked up one from the Washington Post, which focused mainly on the politics of Johnson’s website. The New York Times, which ran one of Hajj’s photos on its front page Saturday, reported that it has published eight of his pictures since 2003, but none were altered. It then went on to quote other papers about steps they take to detect fraudulent images. No paper has taken up the challenge of determining whether there’s anything dodgy about the flow of freelance photos Reuters and other news agencies — including the Associated Press, which also transmitted images made by Hajj — are sending out of tormented Lebanon.

Well said. Rutten may feel there is a priesthood of journalists, but he sees that it needs to police it’s own, or else the laity will do it for them. I’m thrilled to hear him say that, and I’ll go put on a hat so I can tip it.

Meanwhile I’ll go see if Mrs. Patterico can throw some ice water on Patrick and bring him out of his dead faint.