I love a good journ­al­ism spat as much as the next gawp­ing bystander. Here’s one in the Israeli media fea­tur­ing colum­nist Nahum Barnea. It takes a while to get into its stride, but this is how it ends:

Much can be said about journ­al­ism: about its shal­low­ness, about the fact that it often provides free pub­li­city for media advisers and pub­lic rela­tions agents, about its over-reliance on leaks from the police, but very few journ­al­ists have been con­victed on cor­rup­tion charges. Even though any­one can be a journ­al­ist — and this is a basic prin­ciple of a pro­fes­sion that is designed to ensure free­dom of expres­sion — very few pro­fes­sions have a nat­ural selec­tion pro­cess that is as effect­ive. Any­one can begin to be a journ­al­ist, but few remain. Above every reporter is an editor, above every editor is another editor, and this pro­fes­sional hier­archy quite suc­cess­fully weeds out the pos­eurs and the slack­ers and the liars and the ones who are cor­rupt. That is how it usu­ally works, until a journ­al­ist attains such a senior and respec­ted status, truly a guru in his own eyes and in the eyes of those around him, that no editor dares tell him when he has writ­ten a column that is an embar­rass­ment to him­self and his profession.

That is how it hap­pens that pieces, writ­ten by people whom edit­ors trust but which should never have been pub­lished, get into the news­pa­per and spe­cific­ally onto the respec­ted op-ed pages. That is what happened last week to Nahum Barnea.