Marr is moving, tender and truthful about journalism's aristocracy - the foreign reporters, stuck in far-off lands, away from and usually hating their newsdesks, and often doomed to disappointment when editors prefer a celebrity opening, say, to a gritty tale from Kabul or Gaza or Manila.
Not that this is anything new for the Times, which in its coverage and commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict regularly violates the core tenants of truthful and unbiased journalism.
But to have people bringing you the news that you can trust, who you believe are properly committed to an honest, open, revelatory and truthful kind of journalism is a marvelous thing.
If someone's not afraid of breaking the law, do you really believe that the ethics of responsible journalism and truthful news reporting are going to bind such people, either?
Although he covers much of the same ground as in his earlier book, this is no bad thing, since it serves to remind a new generation what journalism at its truthful and serious best can achieve.
So there is a responsibility of being truthful as the job of journalism is or should be.
The only duty of journalism is to be truthful.
They explain their mission this way: "The project crafts tangible digital strategies to fulfill journalism's basic pledge: to serve society with a truthful, intelligent and comprehensive account of ideas and events".
It matters because if art and the lower reaches of journalism and biography converge on a single point of common purpose, it is in being truthful about human beings as they really are and not as we would have them be.
RP: Truthful, always truthful.
