Freedom From the Press This is Frank Rich's column in the NYTimes. He proves Bernard Goldberg's story by acting superior and dismissive just like all the other "journalists" of Goldberg's acquaintance. Goldberg, he implies, is a whiner who hasn't suffered anything, compare to Daniel Pearl.

Pearl's death has, says Rich, "conservative mediaphobes . . . reappraising their knee-jerk hostility to reporters after seeing the price one has paid in pursuit of a story in Pakistan." Of course, by "mediaphobes" he means people who object to the leftward slant in the news not people who hate all media, as one would expect. In his mind there is no other legitimate media so there is no difference.

Then he blasts George Bush for pretty much nothing more than reading Goldberg's book which, he seems to think, proves that Dubya is hostile to the media. For more proof he cites the case of some reporters in Afghanistan who were held at gunpoint by some U. S. soldiers and prevented from entering Zhawar. I'm sure the soldiers were acting on direct orders from the commander-in-chief.

Rich proceeds with a series of incidents including the non-story of the non-Office of Strategic Influence (Disinformation), which was never more than a gleam in someone's eye, but which rises to Orwellian proportions in the minds of the New York Times and the rest of the Easter Media Elite.

If you haven't noticed, it drives journalists, especially those who work for the NYTimes, WaPo and NPR , when the Pentagon doesn't invite them into its planning sessions, or tries to protect its operations and methods. Of course, when someone like Goldberg turns the tables and reports on them, they circle the wagons and don't even discuss his points. They just treat him as though he were the Grand Dragon of the KKK, with arrogant dismissal, anger, epithets, etc., but never really discussing the points he makes, which were already obvious to most of us.

It also bugs the heck out of them when the objects of their high dudgeon refuse to assist them in assembling evidence to convict themselves. Dick Cheney is the new Big Brother to them, and the new Richard Nixon, to boot, because he won't give them the names of his co-conspirators in developing the Administration's energy policy.

The only thing Rich leaves out is the Shadow Government which probably will be in his next column, along with his support for the new Democratic strategy of running against the war.

In the words of Bugs Bunny, created by the late lamented Chuck Jones, what a maroon!