Of the many, many qualities I have come to admire in my friend, Andrew Breitbart, none of them appeals to me more than the white-hot rage one can generate in him by bringing up the subject of press malfeasance.

Andrew understands, as do I and this site’s editor, Michael Walsh, that press bias and incompetence and outright fraud is more of a problem than global warming or the healthcare “crisis,” or the rank corruption in congress, or even the criminal activity on the part of ACORN.  Just ask Walter Duranty, the New York Times’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Moscow correspondent in the 1920s and’30s, and also an apologist for the crimes of Joseph Stalin:

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The press is supposed to be the immune system of the body politic.  The press is supposed to be anywhere and everywhere, seeking out corruption the way a white blood cell targets pathogens. When the press no longer serves this function of protecting the political body against abuses of power – because it is too ideologically blinded to be able to either see or act upon these threats —  then our Republic has a virulent and highly lethal (historically, anyway) form of AIDS.

Talk radio, Fox News and the Internet – places like Big Journalism – are the immune-boosting cocktails that may keep the patient alive long enough for “the Press” to recover its true function and restore the body to health. Until then, here is a quick look at the stakes involved. It’s a Tale of Two Walters: one you may not know much about — and the other you almost certainly do – and hopefully it will warn you that the fight Andrew and Michael and all the other contributors here at Big Journalism are waging is the most important one on the table.