I must confess that I just don't get it. New York Times prima donna Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse refused to appear on a panel on the Supreme Court put on by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication because C-SPAN was going to tape it.

According to people who were there, Greenhouse walked in, took one look at the lights and the camera equipment, and, “became infuriated,” said one person who was standing near her. As Greenhouse herself told me yesterday following the event, she then gave the organizer of the panel an ultimatum. “I told her she had a choice, either she could have me on the panel speaking candidly or she could have C-SPAN there.”

Greenhouse said that she had come prepared to speak to a “room of academics.” She added, “I didn’t want to have to modulate my comments for a national audience.”

This is the sort of thing that worries me.

Let's embrace, for a moment, the mainstream media's preferred fiction that when reporters cover anything, they put aside all their prejudices and don the sacred "mantle of objectivity." This is a fiction that Greenhouse, and her employer, The New York Times continue to cling to despite the fact that when it comes to Greenhouse and the Times it's one big joke that everyone is in on.

If this is the paradigm that you're operating in, then why would Greenhouse need to "modulate" her comments for a national audience. What is she going to say to these academics that she'd be unwilling to put below her byline in the Times?

Give Greenhouse a column and let us be done with the farce that she's somehow a neutral, unbiased reporter.