Is the press above the law?

Instapundit links to this report about reporters resisting subpoenas which call on them to verify the truth of their reporting. Why should they object? They think it looks bad, apparently. Maybe to other reporters, but to most of us out here in the great unwashed, it looks like they think they're better than everybody else.

It's of a piece with the press's wrapping itself in the First Amendment, but Professor Volokh points out the flimsiness of that cloak. It is, after all, the mere freedom to print opinions without being subject to government regulation or harrassment. It doesn't somehow raise their business to a kind of fourth branch of government. The guardian of the people's right to know is the free market, not the New York Times.

If the press wants that kind of power, it should become answerable for its defalcations like other professions. They want us to trust them, but they don't even want to have to testify under oath that their reporting was truthful. Instead, they heap contempt on their customers in the mistaken belief that they are above all regulation. Maybe they've never heard of the unseen hand. Or bankruptcy.