Prizes for the discredited.(Beat the Press: The hand that rules the press ... rules the country--Judge Learned Hand)(CBS Broadcasting Inc.'s Dan Rather and Mary Mapes win Peabody Award)

Network news ratings are in the tank. Almost all the nation's major newspapers have seen their readership plummet over the last few years. Blogs now routinely scoop behemoth news organizations--and steal their audiences. You'd think the smart folks in the establishment press would catch on that whatever they're doing is not working. Think again.

Even as Eason Jordan remained jobless and newsrooms across the country contemplated massive layoffs, media elites gathered on May 16 at New York's Waldorf-Astoria to celebrate themselves, with special honors going to--of all people--CBS's Dan Rather and his erstwhile "60 Minutes" producer, Mary Mapes.

The duo, best known as engineers of the "Memogate" scandal that humiliated a network and effectively destroyed their careers, were winners of a Peabody Award, one of the most prestigious prizes in electronic journalism. On this night, they were honored for their work on the "60 Minutes" expose of the Iraqi Abu Ghraib prison scandal in 2004.

Though they have come to represent all that the viewing public disdains about the establishment media, within the profession itself Rather and Mapes are heroes--an indication of just how out of touch the Fourth Estate has become.

It was as though the members of the Peabody Board somehow missed the fact that Rather and Mapes relied on obviously tainted "evidence" and blinked away many warning signals to run a bogus hit piece in the midst of a Presidential campaign. From their privileged position inside CBS they then smeared anyone who questioned their National Guard story, and continued to defend their laughable production even after it had been thoroughly debunked. The Peabody judges seemed not to mind that CBS had to launch a major investigation into the matter, give Mapes the boot, and put Rather out to pasture.

For Mapes, finding out in April that she had been named a Peabody winner came as vindication. "It's a very sweet day," she told the Dallas Morning News. "The past year has been one of condemnation for me and for others, and I hope people will pause and wonder if they decided too soon."

Peabody director Horace Newcomb tried to explain that the honor had nothing to do with Memogate. "Obviously, we were aware of the [National Guard] story," but that was apparently of little concern. "What we say is that every story stands on its own merits." In other ...