In Spiked, Jenny Holland analyzes former Washington Post executive editor and Watergate contributor Leonard Downie Jr.’s recent op-ed claiming it is more important that readers see themselves in news coverage than that stories are told objectively. This kind of narcissism, she writes, contorts stories to fit readers’ pre-conceived notions – and abandons truth.

Toppling a Communist Empire for $2.7 Million
Though widely thought of as focused on waterboarding terrorists or poisoning foreign potentates, it was by smuggling paper that the CIA achieved its most monumental triumph. R.M. Gerecht in a book review for The Washington Free Beacon charts how the late Cold War-era operation to flood Poland with Western books, magazines, printing supplies and audio recordings fatally weakened the country’s Communist dictatorship, setting the stage for the downfall of the entire Soviet empire. Total cost: US$2.7 million.


