I Hear And Obey, Oh Master

The Horse is reporting (scroll down to the last story) that weaselly NPR ombudsman, Jeffrey Dorkin, is accusing folks who've e-mailed in criticism of Wan Juilliams and M'hora Liasson of taking orders from Atrios.

I don't want to brag, but I've been reading Eschaton for well over a year and I've never even thought of buying that damn Buffy DVD. Now that's willpower!

I do have over 20 "Preznit Giv Me Turkee" beer steins, but I really wanted to buy those.

Update (1/7): Here's part of Dorkin's self-described mandate: "The Ombudsman is the public's representative to National Public Radio, empowered to respond to significant queries, comments and criticisms regarding NPR programming." So it's part of Dorkin's mandate to insult NPR's critics! (And here's his latest report to NPR managment, which suggests that his job duties are limited to counting e-mails.)

What's interesting is that Dorkin unprofessionally insulted Professor Little for raising a issue -- NPR reporters who moonlight as pundits -- which he wrote on at length less than two months earlier. On October 23, 2003, Dorkin wrote:

There is a danger whenever NPR reporters appear in other media that do not have the same standards of journalism. NPR risks its own reputation by lending its own legitimacy to any media that may practice a different standard of journalism....

NPR journalists should be speaking, as well as writing and appearing, in other media. It is good for NPR and for its journalists, but when they do it, they should maintain NPR standards.

Some inside NPR might construe this as restricting their ability to engage in outside work. NPR may need to reinforce with its journalists that they have a choice between outside punditry or inside reporting.

Of course, Dorkin was writing about supposedly liberal reporter Nina Totenberg at the time, and was responding, in servile fashion, to a "Media Alert" from Brent Bozell's group. (I haven't heard of any MRC e-mailers who were repeatedly abused by Dorkin.)

So why is the Dork so defensive and unwilling to listen when it comes to NPR employees whoring for Faux? Does he believe that Faux "practice[s] the [same] standard of journalism" as NPR? His e-mail responses certainly reflect the same standard of professionalism as Faux's.