The independent media has all but taken over the old role of the Fourth Estate, and Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald are two of the most respected voices in the new media generation. We spoke to them on October 1st. We wrote then:

The absence of a critical fourth estate in the run up to the war in Iraq is widely acknowledged, even by the establishment media that trumpeted the lies and misinformation of the Bush administration. Take the NYT yesterday in an article comparing intelligence on Iran's nuclear capabilities with Colin Powell's presentation on Iraq in 2003: "In many dissections of the blunders before the Iraq war, the news media, including The New York Times, came in for a share of the criticism for repeating Bush administration claims about Iraq without sufficient scrutiny or skepticism." You say? The question today is whether the media have learned anything at all. From torture to saber rattling over Iran is there enough scrutiny and skepticism? And if not are independent journalists picking up the slack? Glenn Greewald, a columnist at Salon and the author of Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics and Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army on the battle between the independent press and the mainstream media.