And especially its Beltway correspondents. Because they often don't adhere to common journalism standards (i.e they make stuff up), and the GOP Noise Machine often uses their shoddy 'reports' to attack Democrats.

Latest example of sub-par offerings comes courtesy of the Sunday Telegraph with an article that carries provocative headline and virtually no proof to back the claim up [emphasis added]:

Barack Obama's rich supporters fear his tax plans show he's a class warrior: Some of Barack Obama's richest supporters fear they have elected a “class warrior” to the White House, who will turn America's freewheeling capitalism into a more regulated European system.

Yikes, Obama's rich supporters are in revolt. That would make for an interesting piece of journalism if the Sunday Telegraph, y'know, actually bothered to locate any of Obama's rich supporters who felt that way. But the daily can't, so it just muddles its way through.

Again, the entire premise is that Obama's backers are angry at the new president's supposed hard left turn. But in a nation of 300 million, the Telegraph can't find a single American to quote by name who backs up the newspaper's “revolt” angle. (In real newspapers, that's when articles like this get spiked by editors.)

In fact, the entire article only contains two blind “rich supporter” quotes knocking Obama, and they come from God's-know-what-type-of-sources the Telegraph uses. And yes, to my ear the quotes have a certain Drudge-like quality. i.e. Blind quotes that are a bit too good to be true.

But who cares if the Telegraph has no standards? The Noise Machine loves the headline, so it the passed the article all around the web, which of course will only encourage Telegraph reporters to keep concocting awful journalism like this.