Media watchdogs make journalists nervous. In the US, gnawing at media excesses is a whole industry, but is usually confined to the trade publications, the journalism faculties of universities and their journals.
But now there is Steve Brill, who calls his glossy, expensively produced magazine for the public "The independent voice of the information age." Brill also founded the Court TV channel.
His quaintly named Brill's Content has become the scourge of sloppy reporting in newspapers and TV over the past year since in the first issue the founder pledged to show readers and viewers "how much they can rely" on the media.
Brill started off with a bang when the first issue of his magazine did a 24,000-word critique written by himself, entitled "Pressgate", of how the media handled the Monica Lewinsky story. He drew blood immediately by what he immodestly called "the first day-by-day, story-by-story, deconstruction of how the year's biggest news event spun out of control, to the point where facts were lost in the flurry to be first, and reporters abandoned the rules and the truth".
Brill also had a scoop by getting an on-the-record interview with the independent counsel, Mr Ken Starr, which got Starr into huge trouble for allegedly leaking confidential information from the grand jury investigation.
Brill concluded that the "true scandal" was not anything President Clinton might have done but the media themselves, "a true instance of an institution being corrupted to its core."
Brill rightly exposed much of the circular reporting where reporters often ended up quoting other reporters quoting anonymous "sources", but he was unlucky in his timing.
Two months later Mr Starr got Monica Lewinsky to confirm many of the details denounced as sloppy reporting, such as the infamous navy-blue dress, and then the President himself admitted he had misled the whole country, "even my wife".
However, Brill, with the backing of wealthy investors, has ploughed on as the Grand Inquisitor of the media. He greatly annoyed the Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, by putting a police mugshot of him on the cover dating back to 1977 when he was arrested in New Mexico for some juvenile indiscretion. The headline read "How Bill Gates's PR machine helped make him master of the universe. And why it's failing him now".
The White House press room trembled when last month's issue featured "The best and worst White House reporters". The article promised "to determine the five best reporters and four just skating along".
This month's issue carried pained letters, one from an editor defending his correspondent who had been named one of the four "worst" reporters. If this was Ireland the writs would be flying, but the libel laws are a lot easier here.
Brill is also keeping a "pundit scorecard" in which he scrutinises the predictions of the pundits on the TV chat shows. These are the high-profile names who are usually treated deferentially but must be hopping mad when the public is reminded of how often they got it wrong, especially in the run-up to last year's mid-term elections when the Democrats were supposed to get hammered.
The latest issue has a detailed breakdown of how much the well-known media figures get paid and showing the huge gap between TV and the written press. The big-name TV anchors like Barbara Walters, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings earn between $7 million and $10 million a year for presenting primetime news programmes. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, chairman and publisher of the New York Times, earns only $1.1 million and the executive editor, Joseph Lelyveld, about $600,000.
John Harris, the Washington Post correspondent, who was listed as one of the "best" covering the White House earns $100,000 while David Bloom, who was rated as one of the "worst", earns three times as much. The moral is: get your face on TV and watch your pay packet rise.
Matt Drudge, once a figure of fun with a dubious Website, now has a TV slot earning up to $200,000. But Brill points out that he no longer seems to be getting any scoops post-Lewinsky.
The New York Post's widely read gossip page is checked for accuracy by Brill's staff this month. Of the 52 items published over a week in March, 30 were true, 14 "unable to confirm", three had "minor errors", four were "exaggerated or untrue in a significant way" and one was "untrue as best we can tell".
The last one was a story that Tipper Gore, wife of the Vice-President, had a face-lift in training for Al's presidential run next year.
Mrs Gore's spokesman said it was "entirely inaccurate" but Washington reporters began blowing up recent photographs of Tipper and comparing them with enlarged older shots to try and check the face-lift item.
Brill has been having some problems of his own. Two editors have resigned and the staff have been finding the 65-hour weeks in the early stages hard going. Circulation dropped after the first issue on the Lewinsky coverage sold almost 300,000. Brill is aiming at 500,000 in five years' time.
Brill was only slightly embarrassed when it was revealed that he contributed $10,000 to the Democrats but had not declared it.
Todd Gitlin, professor of culture, journalism and sociology at New York University, welcomed the fact that "Brill, the outsider, has come bristling into the Washington press corps' closed room and thrown open some windows. No wonder yelps resound".