PressEthic

Times have been good lately in the land of the pundit. Opining, pontificating, self-promotion – such are the candyland dreams of these professional opinion spewers. But a new feature in - of all things, a traditional media outlet - may start to cloud punditry's endless blue horizon.

In May of this year, the Los Angeles Times debuted an occasional feature that runs on its editorial page called the "Accountability Corner." The corner, which typically appears a few days after a major news story, compiles sensational quotes from government officials or the professionally opinionated. As one can tell from the following quotes from the June 19th edition (the same week that Michael Jackson was acquitted in his recent court case), the simple premise is to show how wrong "experts" can be:

"I think the jury will ... not have Michael Jackson singing 'Beat It' today. I think he's going to be convicted."

-- Attorney Robert Shapiro on CNN

"There is no question we will see convictions here."

-- Former prosecutor Wendy Murphy on Fox News

This week's Accountability Corner compiles quotes from the recent Hurricane Katrina coverage, where the estimated 10,000 dead have yet to materialize. While it may be easy to dismiss some of the wrong-headed assertions as the product of momentary hysteria (after all, there were plenty of assertions regarding September 11th and the search for weapons of mass destruction that never came to pass) or simply silly with the gift of hindsight, a little dose of recent history may be what journalism needs.

What this Los Angeles Times feature shows is that the idea of "expert opinion" is a very thin veil. If even professors of civil engineering at major universities could be so woefully wrong when it came to how long it would take before the pumps started working in New Orleans again, then talking-head punditry must be running on empty.