Shaken-down billionaire Ron Burkle has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal — and shouldn't every federal investigation be exclusively carried out through the media? After Burkle maintains the Page Six has been out to get him, especially since he won't sell out his powerful friends, Burkle brings it all back together for us:

No doubt the challenge of upholding the highest media standards has never been harder. But institutions that give up will find that the lines between them and bloggers, demi-pundits and rumor-mongers on the Internet will be blurred beyond recognition. Newspapers that continue to go down the road of tabloidism, that adopt the shoddy standards of gossip reporting, and that arrogantly resist correcting their mistakes, risk losing their special role in our democracy.

We love how Burkle can decide that shady Page Six crap is really about "media standards." As if the gossip business had such a thing.

Yellow Peril [WSJ]

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