The Fourth Estate clears its throat.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: TILTING at windmills - The ignorance of media - Brief article - Column

Another problem with today's media is their ignorance about how the government really works. Consider a recent front-page article in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Billions of Bloat Uncovered in Beltway." It describes the large number of overlapping programs in the federal bureaucracy. On the "continued" page, the article acknowledges that this is not exactly news: "There have been multiple attempts to cull the number of federal programs in recent years." But it says the attempts have failed because they "often run into opposition from lawmakers who rush to defend individual spending provisions," or are "ignored or postponed by agencies or lawmakers when they...