....Ashcroft knows that, with niftily chosen sound bites, he can dominate credulous local television, which harbors few practitioners of the probe and deep focus that can legitimately be called journalism. This has allowed him largely to stay "on message," rally his partisans and keep annoying critics at bay. The exception was an interview with ABC News' Peter Jennings this month in which Jennings did ask some pointed, specific questions about immigrant detention and other civil liberties infractions. No doubt Ashcroft will not be doing that again soon.

....Ashcroft's avoidance of the print press reveals something important about this administration — the zealotry with which it goes about protecting itself from scrutiny. This zealotry is linked with the paranoid streak that, as the historian Richard Hofstadter taught us long ago, runs like a bright thread through American history. Ashcroft's segregation of journalists is paranoid, in the sense Hofstadter meant, because it turns fantasies of persecution into a conspiracy among print reporters to deny the attorney general a fair hearing. So he denies them access.

The authors have some advice to their fellow journalists, which we hope they heed:

Ashcroft is betting that the press corps has no core, that reporters are more committed to seeking advantage over rivals than protecting the public's right to know. It's past time for journalists to hold him to account.