This week on Larry King Live, discussing the James Frey butt-whipping with Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff and Smoking Gun editor William Bastone:

CALLER: What is The Smoking Gun all about?

BASTONE: We’re a CourtTV-owned Web site and what we do is we obtain documents, whether they be police reports or FBI memos, mug shots, primary source documents, and we post them on our site with accompanying stories so the visitor can come and look at actual documents.

And it’s a different way — when we started the site almost nine years ago, we decided we were going to do a Web site that was paper based. So you can come and actually look at the actual documents surrounding a news story.

And hopefully you look at them and you take a look and you determine if the newsworthiness, if they’re of interest to you. So it’s kind of giving you a different perspective of the news than one you would get from kind of a cable television outfit or kind of a newspaper.

…KING: Michael, what do you think of the concept of The Smoking Gun?

WOLFF: It seems incredibly boring to me, but — and I don’t know why anyone would possibly be interested in it. And I have spent the past nine years trying to avoid it.

BASTONE: I’d say it’s kind of interesting that Michael says that. He also avoided reading James Frey’s book. So I bet it’s not stopping him from commenting on it.. So take that with a grain of salt.

WOLFF: Well, I seem to be the only intelligent one who avoided reading the book.

BASTONE: Ah, OK.

Hopefully I’m not the only intelligent one disturbed that a journalist publicly declares the concept of a site specializing in primary source documentation “boring”. Not that a network-owned website can be completely unbiased (even Consumer Reports cannot), but it’s certainly an invaluable resource. Matt Drudge, who has linked to reports on the site, pointed out months ago on the radio show that Smoking Gun primarily posts plaintiffs’ documents and not the other side. So it has limitations, yes. But something I wouldn’t be possibly interested in? Eliminating the media middleman — or at least reducing me dependence upon him? Oh, I forgot. Vanity Fair decides that for me.

Wolff – and his VF editor, Graydon Carter – might be interested to know that I have spent the last nine years trying to cut through layers of news interpretation and commentary from media critics who are too intelligent to review the details of a story before commenting on them.

(On a side note, Drudge claimed in Drudge Manifesto that on a Vanity Fair photo shoot, the magazine fudged his wardrobe credits, identifying his thrift shop shirt as Ralph Lauren and his tie as Echo from Saks Fifth Avenue. I’m honestly not sure if he’d even wear that stuff now that he can afford it.)

You know, I don’t have my head in the sand. The Drudge Report has limitations, just as The Smoking Gun or any other news source. But it’s blatant arrogance like this interview that makes me feel not-so-dirty about patronizing The Drudge Report.