I was talking to a reporter from a UK newspaper the other day, trying to explain to him the operation, begun some years ago, to discredit the American newspaper industry. I'm not sure if anyone outside the U.S. understands what an astoundingly near-complete assassination has been done upon our papers. The worst part is, no one knows whose plan this was. We can see, at least, who benefits from it: the people who are reported upon. And we can see the talking points—take a look at the comments on these two New York Observer items, on the Times standards editor's latest memos about how the paper's staffers should not give the appearance of political impropriety from donations, bumper stickers or even Facebook. The commenters arrived, largely, from a link on the Drudge Report.

Writes "William Messer": "What an idiot. Everybody already knows that you run a 'Wacko Lib' paper."

Some reveal themselves to have absolutely no idea what they're talking about: "Its a start. I have always wondered if the Media or Journalist have a written code of ethics. This would be a very good start to that code of ethics." Well, yes they do, and it's on the Times corporate website!

Some revel in their freedom from the press, as if the ideas and news in the paper were infectious: "Because of this bias problem, I have quit my subscriptions to all news papers and get my news from other sources. This is easily done now and decreases the power of the news papers to influence my thinking on so many subjects."

One of the talking points revealed over and over again is that former Times reporters Jayson Blair and Judy Miller were symptoms of the same thing (when in fact they were completely opposite cases) and also that they are representative of the paper's entire staff: "But is it OK for an NY Time employee to plagiarize a bumper sticker?"

The talking points go so far right that they end up left, or the other way around, in that strange Libertarian place where the San Francisco liberals and the Vermont conservatives agree: "The clampdown is now complete. The NYT wants total control of the message. I guess the First amendment doesn't apply to NYT staffers either anymore."

There's a regrettable but understandable confusion about the age-old idea of "editorial pages" versus "news pages": "Didn't the Times endorse Clinton and McCain early on? Didn't they? Isn't that worse than individual staffers endorsing?" Which is hilarious, since what most of these people are championing is the return of the pamphleteers, the return of William Randolph Hearst, a return to the age in which all news was opinion.

But where there is a substantial divide in the hatred of the Times is on whether journalists should pretend to be objective or should acknowledge and move on from their own, you know, thoughts and interpretations.

Sometimes you can see the misinformation just trying to be free: "Recall the reporter who marched in a pro-abortion march. I think she was the same reporter [link added] who kept writing about the Supreme Court, even though there was a conflict of interest involving her husband. And it's somewhat weird to have Donna Brazille appear on CNN as a commentator when she's an Obama backer."

Right now, the law is changing regarding defamation and anonymous Internet commenters. A new decision in New York state suggests a course of action. In a decision in Westchester County Court about anonymous commenters on a newspaper's website, the judge wrote: "There is no question that the First Amendment protects the right of a person to speak anonymously. That protection, however, is no greater than the right of a person to speak when their identity is known."

There is no doubt that anonymous comments, including some attached to those Observer articles (not the ones reprinted above) and many, many others defame individual reporters, other staffers and the owners and stockholders of the Times itself in turn or all at once. There's no doubt that many anonymous commenters commit trade libel against the business.

The accusations published anonymously about the Times are often false, negligent, incautious, harmful, malicious; they go far beyond protected opinion in many, many instances; they meet and exceed every legal standard of a defamation complaint. Many of these comments are libel per se, as they accuse the Times of dishonest business practices and even crimes.

The Times was unprepared for the sustained campaign against it when that campaign began years ago, and has never seen any way or reason to defend itself. Their attempt to hold themselves to a noble silence, to let the paper's work speak for itself, has been a failure.