Why it matters that Greenpeace lied and the press doesn't seem to care

It also contributes to the decline in journalism's standing. We're already only one step ahead of used car salesmen and politicians. And that matters because every step lower means that good journalism is devalued along with bad journalism, and truth becomes marginalised as something you'll never find in a news report, and when you do, it ends up being something you won't recognise.

Journalists flatter themselves that they are part of the democratic process, that there is an extra-parliamentary chamber for us somewhere called The Fourth Estate. We think that we are indispensable to the health of the polity. Well we should be, but unless we can do better than this, we never will be. That's what excites me about the Internet. It gives people with skill, intellect and integrity the opportunity to form their own Fourth Estate. This grubby episode demonstrates how much we need that electronic chamber.

It also shows how the 'net, even though less influential than it could be, has made this into a story when in the "bad old days", before Tim Berners-Lee's invention, reprinted press releases are all citizens would have got. They certainly wouldn't have got access to primary material like this, and this, and this.

Finally it matters to journalists at the most elementary level, because if they continue to report like this, then readers will work out that with the Internet they can do their own reporting and analysis. They don't really need journalists anymore. If journalists want to continue having a job, it really, really does matter that they care about what really happened.