Learn While You Earn

The big type around Nancy Grace's first anniversary as the eponymous host of her own Headline News hour reported the ratings gains for the network since Ms. Grace began her show. The little type, buried deep in a New York Observer feature piece on the lady, makes it clear what the price of those ratings gains really is:

In February, Ms. Grace's staff was ordered to attend a three-hour workshop on reporting basics to help remedy "lax journalistic standards," according to a CNN source. The session covered issues such as the meaning of "off the record" and the number of sources it takes to confirm a piece of information.

The thrust of the piece is the large number of factual errors in Grace's repeated account of the crime, the murder of her fiance, that launched her on a career as a prosecutor and victims' rights advocate. Grace, who appears to loathe defense attorneys, has a defense right out of the Johnnie Cochran Jr. handbook:

Asked if she had checked her memory against the official documents before writing the book and giving the interviews, Ms. Grace said, "I wrote about everything with the knowledge I had."

Coming next workshop: What "truth" is.