Josh Kraushaar is the politics editor at National Journal. He’s also a trusting soul. Well, a soul who trusts the White House, at least.
The Washington Post broke a story last night about the White House’s involvement in obstructing a report that implicated staffers in the Secret Service prostitution scandal in 2012, something the White House has repeatedly denied (and still does). But the Post has the story pretty well down, sourced and researched.
Still, Josh is having a difficult time believing this White House may have been less than truthful. He took to his dream journal Twitter account last 
night to express his confusion. He told the world, “First instinct is to trust what the WH is saying, but they’ve squandered a lot of trust lately.”
“First instinct is to trust what the WH is saying…”? This is journalism?
Kraushaar isn’t some opinion guy (like me), he isn’t some random blogger, he’s THE political editor for National Journal, and his first instinct is to blindly nod his head at White House push-back over an embarrassing story of them lying? A story, by the way, written by fellow journalists and vetted by editors, like him.
His first instinct should never be to “trust” any subject of a story, his job is to be skeptical unless and until the truth is discovered. Proof used to be a standard — actual proof or, at a minimum, proof that a source would have had first-hand knowledge of the truth. Not something you hope against hope to be the case.
One has to wonder, after the IRS, Fast and Furious, red lines, “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor,” and everything else, what recent event was the straw that “bent” the camel of trust’s back. What caused Josh to doubt his “first instinct”?
An honest media is one that goes where the facts take them. Our current media are throne-sniffing fanboys disheartened by reality when one of their own occasionally does their job the way they’re all supposed to.