I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
"Fairy Tale Conservatives"
Interesting, Atrios. The BBC actually does this in their interviews. The interviewer always plays 'devil's advocate' and argues the other side. Some Americans have been quite upset by this method of interviewing, I noticed, but I think it's a good way to get both sides out.
I believe the myth of "objective journalism" creates an ethos of manipulative, faithless reporters who view everyone as a "source" to be burned given the opportunity.
I do believe the corporate media is public enemy #1.
The New American Optimist: Having a positive outlook because you get to keep your arms and legs after being beheaded.
The media IS the problem.
Echidne,
I disagree with your assessment. It's not devil's advocate, it's called following up. We used to have that in our media oh so long ago. But asking questions and playing devils advocate are not the same thing.
...or should that be the media ARE the problem?
I'm for returning to the days when newspapers and everything else were identifiably left or right - give me the Arizona Republican over AZ Central as it now bills itself. There isn't any such thing as balance required - the reporting of events is not a question of balance and never has been. The choice of events to report on is by definition one of selection, left right or center, but events themselves are not balanced. Evenhanded, fair, equivalent - nonsense. But that takes work of course, actual reporting, actual investigation takes effort. 'Gathering facts' isn't reporting, it's reading the encyclopaedia - and that's exactly all we have any longer. Just as in this country we have replaced education with pedagogy without ever enquiring who was going to do the work to produce the information to be included in all those lovely lesson plans - who actually wrote those encyclopaedia articles, who actually made the primary effort to find out what really happened or what someone actually did say or plan or do, so we have chosen to confuse laziness with fairplay. The AP pre-writing a debate template wasn't being lazy; but the 'news organisations' posting it were. Every single moment that the laziness is allowed, we will become equivalently lazy in thought and deed.
CNN is the worst of the offenders. With Fox News you know your getting biased dribble, but CNN operates under the guise that they are a balanced news network when in fact they have several biased reporters - namely Judy Woodruff, Wolf Blitzer, and Bill Schneider.
I think the Media does not want Americans to wake up and realize how bad our situation actually is because it might decrease their advertising revenue. Profit is more important than an informed populace!
CNN is the worst of the offenders. With Fox News you know your getting biased dribble, but CNN operates under the guise that they are a balanced news network when in fact they have several biased reporters - namely Judy Woodruff, Wolf Blitzer, and Bill Schneider.
I think the Media does not want Americans to wake up and realize how bad our situation actually is because it might decrease their advertising revenue. Profit is more important than an informed populace!
In all of the debates about the debates and the election the missing ingredient is the role of the media. If they were doing their jobs, then this election would be a formality. Instead they lie, deceive by proxy, and substitute Tinkerbell belief for reality.
If there is an area that deserves condemnation: it is the fact that our media has consistently lied and by omission, hidden the truth from the people.
My hope for John Kerry is a simple one: when Bush tells one of his whoppers, prick the little prick's bubble by countering with the truth.
Good suggestion on C-Span. I will try to stomach this mess through them.
There is an underlying problem; the media didn't get to this point on its own. They are a big part of the problem, but they didn't start this.
The problem is not even laziness in my view, it's just that most media people consider telling the truth to be impolite. This is probably why most of the good reporting that's been done in the past few years has been in print: it's a lot easier to risk offending someone from afar than if he/she is sitting across from you in a TV studio.
35 children are killed in Baghdad today, and Wolf lead today on CNN with the BREAKING NEWS that Tony Blair was having a routine heart procedure, and he'll be back at work on Monday.
From the WSJ reporter's email (which I hadn't seen, thanks for link, Atrios):
I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of the vote.
UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE.
We are so fucked it isn't even funny any more.
By the way, I really like "Fairy Tale Conservatives." That just covers all the bases - or all their base.
Echidne,
I've listened to quite a few interviews on the BBC, and the devil's advocate is an interesting way to go.
However, the BBC interviewers can still toss horrendously softball questions using this formula.
Also their "devil's advocates" can be atrocious straw men, they seem like they are confrontational, but they don't really follow up questions any better than the American press does.
one thing i will give them, they are less willing to accept non-answers and evasions from their interview subjects.
I would say that the phrase:
"But you haven't answered the question, have you?"
is much more likely to be heard on the BBC then in any American news media.
that part is refreshing at any rate.
I disagree with your assessment. It's not devil's advocate, it's called following up. We used to have that in our media oh so long ago. But asking questions and playing devils advocate are not the same thing.
I think that what BBC is a little more than just following up. They actually ask the kinds of questions that the opposition of the interviewee would ask, and they bring in the counterargument to whatever the person interviewed is saying.
from the moment the press/media wore flag pins, rode around with their embedded units and paid all due respect to their war time president, all hope was lost.
with few exceptions, the press/media are not objective. they have picked a side, and feel no need, have no desire, and see no reason to change what bthye are doing.
has judith miller been fired? robert novac? jeff gerth? tim russert? anyone? no, they get book deals. they are rewarded.
they delight in the trivial (look at all the pre debate coverage...its all the same forchristsales, same clips of gore sighing, reagon "there you go again-ing", nixon sweating and "john kerry has got to apprear human-ing".
and tomorrow, they will do it all again.
I didn't know Blair was in hospital.
Although I haven't been on the computer very much today either.
Obviously.
The media needs to wake up to the fact that Rove and the GOP are conducting a propaganda campaign, and have been for years. It's really that simple. As history tells us, propaganda is an extremely effective weapon, and I believe the media in its present state is woefully illequiped to handle it.
The truth of the matter is that (I'm going to sound like an old fart, which I am) but a lot of folks 30 or under are woefully undereducated and ignorant.
I see it behind the counter at the bank, even with attorneys I deal with, or business colleagues, why should the media be different?
These press reports that a gazillion of American kids couldn't identify France on a map are not recent. I heard them 10, 15, 20 years ago. Where do you think those people are today? Wearing shirt and ties, and running our country.
The media is neither worse nor better than the majority (let's say 60%) of the American population -- uneducated, overweight, intellectually lazy and generally ignorant.
Anyone who's had a political discussion in an airplane or a train with a German/ Indian/ Canadian/ Mexican/ Russian/ French/ you name it knows how it is. We're not dumb; we're ignorant. (And proud to be - fuck knowledge should be our motto.)
The media isn't evil, they're just lazy (as John Stewart pointed out last night), just as lazy as 90% of the (younger) executives I deal with in my business.
(A recent anecdotal example: a middle-level manager in a company I do business with did not recognize the name of one of the company's reasonably famous founders (est. 1961) when there's a big coffee-table book about the company sitting among other places on a coffee-table in the reception area. Me, if I worked for XYZ Inc and XYZ Inc had a coffee table book called 50 YEARS WITH XYZ Inc sitting in my office, I'd be curious to read it, no?)
This election is, above all, a battle between LIES and TRUTH, to put it simply. It will demonstrate if LIES can effectively bury TRUTH with enough money and advertising behind it.
If the American people fail that test, we, too, will be buried within a couple of generations (at best).
They are a big part of the problem, but they didn't start this.
If we thought cable teevee coverage was going to give us more voices, we were wrong.
This has got to stop.
Just heard a clip from the Weld debates. Kerry's not so bad at the debate game. Very, very quick witted. Bush always comes off with the awe shucks crap.
John keep it short dude.b Smile a bit etc.
Iraq is a mess.
The $ exchange has tanked.
Bush's Getting our boys killed.
Halliburton cronyism.
Thought, you are indeed correct that the BBC reporters are not always that good in bringing up the opposing point, though I've also heard some great interviews of this type. But at least they try, whereas here it's regarded as biased to do so.
I believe if Bush comes out staggering drunk, pukes on the podium, moons the cameras and passes out cold, the media will say, "Even though he was obviously ill, the President bravely showed his playful, Human side tonight".
Fuck the media, we're going to have to do this ourselves.
The simple fact that the media report the "Iraq is going great" meme shows their cowardice to report the truth.
Why in the fuck is it that the reporters over there can't even leave their Baghdad hotel in the green zone? Is it because everything is so great?
Beer #4 just entered my mouth.
Echidne - I know exactly what you mean. When the BBC guys are really good, they can control the entire process. They keep the person surrounded. In this country, no one on camera has the intellectual capacity to pull that off. They don't have the educations for it.
We really are screwed in a lot of ways.
While the WSJ op/ed page has long been an asylum for lunatics, their news reporters have generally been first-rate -- Daniel Pearl, for example.
Chris Albritton is another one, one who rejects the "the media doesn't report the good news that's happening" crowd. The truth is that the good news--a new park, a new school--seems awfully trivial to Iraqis who are terrified of kidnappings, car-bombs, unemployment, a resurgent tyranny--is pathetic. There's nothing but spin, here, and the fact that the papers aren't leading with their own reporters' fear of being kidnapped and refusual to leave the fortified press hotels is criminal. That's the huge story--this, the "central front in the war on terror" is a losing one.
I thought America was getting over the top surreal during the Clinton years as the tabloid media seemed to be dominating the news scene. One year Clinton's State Of The Union was shown split screen with the verdict from the OJ civil trial. The next year the Monica story was just breaking as he delivered it. The theme this year is America's flight from reality. It is peaking tonight my fellow Americans. If Bush uses "pessimism" as his word of the night he will win the election by causing people who know better to be institutionalized and unable to vote. Vote absentee as soon as you can. We may not be peaking tonight.
Brian C.B. - That is what I'm waiting to hear someone say - We Are Fucking Losing This War. If we lose it altogether, we could really be in for way more interesting times than I want to live in.
It has to be stopped and right now. It's the scariest thing out there - it's a whole hell of a lot scarier than some possibility of a terrorist attack. Iraq is like looking into the core of WWIII.
"I wish I knew why - it would be easier to figure out what to do about it. It could be simply because they're in the tank for Republicans, and we can't possible broadcast such "partisan facts" at this time. It could be because they were all complicit in the runup to the war, and they're unwilling to face the monster they've created."--Atrios
Isn't it obvious? Sy Hersch on TDS said it. We've been taken over by a cabal. I know that is hard to believe. This is America. That stuff happens in places like Central American or some African or Indonesian country.
Read David Neiwert's latest post on fascism. Man, we've got it here. Not like Germany, not like Italy, not like Spain, but open you eyes and look at our very own home grown American version. Why should we think it couldn't happen here, and believe this is just the media's fault?
Did anyone listen to Sy Hersch. He just about concedes this too.
Take a good hard look, my friends. The little itch is turning into a rash, and what's after that?
Goddess help us. Really.
I'll watch the presidential presentation, but it's in the bag for BushCo.
Why does anyone think they would ever, EVER cede power to anyone. They got all three branches. You think they'll give it up?
The fact that our election already has people questioning if it'll be legit is a horrible indictment on how our democratic process has deteriorated. Imagine. Americans actually believe fraud will be commited in the coming election. Lots of Americans thinks this, including me.
The price of liberty may be eternal vigilance, but I've been vigilant for it seems an eternity, and I feel liberty slipping away.
One aspect of this topic which is extremely critical (and forgive me if someone above has mentioned it, and I just missed it) is that when all three branches of government are controlled by the same party, the press needs to take a different stance--that of the fact-checker, and investigator that would be normally done by one of the branches. It hasn't been done by the press for four years.
Sorry, Atrios, I respect your diagnosis but I'm just a bit puzzled by your remedy...
"Their job must be not simply to report, but to get their message heard above the noise."
I'm not sure what this means. Does it mean we (presumptuously lumping myself in with the "good" media, though anyone who saw my Fall 2002 reporting would probably disagree) need to be more "shrill"? How do you rise above the noise? Can you really decide to "balance out" another medium (this is the ridiculous theory argued by FoxNews), or another entire world view?
PBS and NPR do a solid job of educating their audiences, but appealing to a broader swath of the public is read by The Bosses to mean dumbing something down, speeding up the graphics, making the sound louder.
(The criticism of Moore's movie, if we're talking about the Iraq = Happyland passage, ought to have been that it was "insane," not that it was "not balanced." I'm sure you could have found happy kids somewhere in Rwanda/the USSR/Darfur/Kosovo, but that doesn't really mitigate the overall picture.)
The single best contribution to media criticisms that I have ever encountered on blogs is the indictment of "he said / he said" journalism. There are of course other problems, like laziness, like corporate concentration in media markets etc. On a day to day basis, though, I find that the belief that we're doing our jobs by saying "Bush said, but on the other hand Kerry said" without a third paragraph saying either "Bush was wrong" or "Kerry was wrong" or "neither/both" to be an abdication of our responsibilities.
With that, I'm off to cover the debate. Play drinking games in moderation.
Surely the point is not to be hostile to politicians or to kiss up to them, but to approach them in whatever fashion you need to in order to elicit real answers.
By the same token, news organizations should be evaluated by how well they inform people about important issues and not by mechanical and easily gamed rules about equal time. By my standard, since the American public is ignorant, mislead, and distracted, the media is a failure. QED
From the reporter's e-mail: "a raging barbaric guerilla war" -- so horrible, so sad. And George Bush denies it is happening.
Echidne,
agreed, at least they try.
Now, the Irish press, whoo baby do they go after their subjects.
why i remember this one interview when an Irish reporter was downright mean to our president, interrupting him and not taking his B.S. lying down.
man we need reporters like her here in the USA.
Lebanized?
I guess it is kind of like sour milk.
(The criticism of Moore's movie, if we're talking about the Iraq = Happyland passage, ought to have been that it was "insane," not that it was "not balanced." I'm sure you could have found happy kids somewhere in Rwanda/the USSR/Darfur/Kosovo, but that doesn't really mitigate the overall picture.)
I'm sick of that fucking argument. The point of that scene was not that Iraq was "happyland"; the point was that these are the people we're killing. Ordinary people. Children.
It's really not that hard.
We Americans are the problem. We can't bear the thought that we may not be invincible--that we aren't going to win this one. It scares the hell out of us because we have to dominate by force, because we no longer have the moral authority to lead. No one in the mainstream media wants to be the one to clearly say that we not only failed, but we were utterly wrong in every aspect of this war. The message bearer will forever be tainted as the one who burst the bubble. And we Americans don't want to hear it. It's easier to sleep at night believing the fantasy that everything's okay--"we're making progress--it'll all turn out alright." Even a liberal like me hates to admit that we were so wrong and so morally bankrupt. It's painful, and most would rather pretend that it will all turn out okay in the end, someday... It won't.
There are people, intelligent, connected with the government, who are saying, "We've lost Iraq." They just are scared of being blackballed by Bush and Company.
Kevin Drum had a post, today, on the necessity of a draft if Bush were re-elevated to the job. We just don't have the troops, now, and none for the future Operation Iranian Liberation (Jesus, you know Iran has twice the population of Iraq, right?). He points out that even just keeping the lid on in Iraq is too demanding, long term, for the troops we have. It's either a draft, or retreat. And, God knows the bad press for Bush if he retreats.
You can tell when Atrios is really pissed by the amount of spelling and grammatical mistakes he makes in his post.
He should be pissed, as should we all. This whole "not enough good news" business reminds me of when I was in high school and brought home my report card, filled with lots of Ds and Fs. There were a few Bs, and amazingly, an A every once in a while. When I would get the Talk from the Rents, I would always respond "but what about the Bs? You never look at the good I'm doing!" in classic teen angst form.
Yeah, good things are happening; schools are opening, sewers are being repaired. But when 35 kids are killed in one day, that overshadows any renovations....
On a day to day basis, though, I find that the belief that we're doing our jobs by saying "Bush said, but on the other hand Kerry said" without a third paragraph saying either "Bush was wrong" or "Kerry was wrong" or "neither/both" to be an abdication of our responsibilities.
Your compatriots editorialize.
Please.
"I'm sick of that fucking argument. The point of that scene was not that Iraq was "happyland"; the point was that these are the people we're killing. Ordinary people. Children.
It's really not that hard."
You're (mostly) right, actually. I've seen the movie, and I've seen interviews in which he says that it was his antidote to the U.S. charges that Saddam's regime was awful and that Iraq posed a threat.
I think I've been overreacting to the latter part (the "rebuttal" bit) and not the civilian casualties part. My apologies.
The difference with the BBC and the European press, in general, is that they play devil's advocate against both sides. So, when you have some incoherent chimp drooling in Europe it becomes really really obvious that all that it is is a chimp drooling.
The press in this country are so fucking lazy that when Rove tells them that the droll was responsible for the cleanest water east of the Mississippi and saved millions of kids from dying of malnutrition, that's what they report. And, they report it with a straight face and argue with those who disagree.
Now I'm off to start drinking. Kerry's media wake will be starting, oh, 17 seconds after the debate ends.
A sample of BBC interviewing here.
And I still want to know why CNN relegates Brent Sadler to its international broadcasts. Actually, I do know: because he reports facts from Iraq, not Bushit.
It takes a while for most people to accept that we are losing a war. The reporters on the ground know it but their editors probably find it hard to publish that the massively funded US military is losing to insurgents who are supposed to be running out of ammunition. Unlike Vietnam, where we had the convenient boogey-man of world-wide communism and an insurgency whose resilience we could blame on Chinese arms, here we face a people who just want to defend their country and their faith from occupiers.
War Is Peace.
Slavery Is Freedom.
Ignorance Is Truth.
Bush Is Safety.
drew - this isn't the first illegal invasion that America has been guilty of, so perhaps it doesn't have to be quite such an existential question for reporters.
It was good times back when papers were owned locally and often by families. Dallas used to have a liberal paper - The Dallas Times Herald, where I first read Molly Ivins, I believe - and a conservative paper - The Dallas Morning News. It made sense. They gave each other competition for news stories which pushed them to do decent news reporting. There wasn't this absurd balancing act where because one company owns every damn thing, it tries to be every damn thing.
What the fuck happened to our anti-Trust people? It's like they've fallen off the edge of the world. Oh yeah; Reagan.
I've seen the movie, and I've seen interviews in which he says that it was his antidote to the U.S. charges...
The current regime's charges.
Read about the incredible misewry in Sudan today.
In a different world, we'd be trying to help.
In a rational world.
Best post ever Atrios. Absolutely correct.
Atrios:
Thanks for providing the link to the WSJ correspondence. It is truly sad what is happening over there.
If you listen to any of the calls that criticize Kerry, these people have been fed the republican talking points.
They would follow anyone that told them what they wanted to hear.
At least the Dems disagree and add excellent points when they debate.
Wake up, America!
In a different world, we'd be trying to help.
Pie, it's always mystified and saddened me -- at this point in our history we should have a standard in place for immediately organizing and sending aid to people in need. We trail behind countries with far greater resources. Wherever there is senseless killing or even a quake or a landslide or a flood, we should be there, leading the way. We have squandered our potential for greatness, time and time again.
*
The truth of the matter is that (I'm going to sound like an old fart, which I am) but a lot of folks 30 or under are woefully undereducated and ignorant.
That's funny; I didn't realize that Wolf, Novak, Schneider, Judith Miller or many of the other egregious media people were 30 or under.
Also, I notice that many younger people are voting for Kerry while the "old farts" are going for Bush.
That dog don't hunt, sorry. Besides, don't you know that 50 is the new 30? And I am over 30; old enough to remember the phrase "don't trust anyone over 30."
er, I meant to say, "countries with far less resources. why can't i talk these days?...
*
Don't post here much compared to dKos.
But that was a brilliant essay, Atrios!
Thank you for doing this.
The media knows what it has become...I'm completely convinced of it. They KNOW!
The simple truth of it is that they have abandoned any sense of integrity they once had in favor ratings, ad revenue, and buying up more outlets to add to their evil empires.
I think they somehow know that they can never regain their credibility again...so they just don't even bother to try.
YIKES!
C'mon, folks - Kerry's still in this thing. There's a lot of folks out there who just need a little reassurance that Kerry'll be fine in the White House.
Case in point - I just got back from getting me and my stepson haircuts. I was talking to the hairdresser, and she was telling me she wasn't sure about Kerry, but that Bush scared her. All I did was point out how Kerry would bring maturity and sober thinking to the job. I also told her about Kerry's work on the Iran/Contra affair and how he helped bring down a source of terrorist funding.
Within 60 seconds, she was nodding and agreeing. So was her boss. So was the assistant.
All it takes is a little push. Go out there and help someone see the truth. You'll feel better!
Your good american dollars are keeping the cnns whoreshow alive.
Drop cable and quit feeding the whores.
Tena says: "There is an underlying problem; the media didn't get to this point on its own. They are a big part of the problem, but they didn't start this."
And I say: Amen!!
But nobody wants to talk about the underlying problem--the great corruption of the great majority of the once-great American people.
The media is a business not a public service.
If you don't like what you see, turn off your damn televisions; if you don't like what you hear, turn off your radio; if you don't like what you read, cancel you newspaper subscriptions. Whatever you do, don't go giving these guys your money or ratings points. With the internet, one can stay informed about current events and with a library and a bookstore one can become very well informed on history and background issues.
It really is that simple. We need to ostracize the mainstream media so that it is considered the equivalent of tabloid magazines. It will lose all credibility and people will search out new sources of information.
Act don’t Whine!
Just waking up here... CCTV9 is going to broadcast the debate live. I'm not sure if they'll do post-debate analysis or not, but it dumbfounds me regularly that a television broadcaster run by the Communist Chinese Propaganda Ministry can provide more reality than CNN-US and the other US-based media.
Lebanized?
Why are you dragging Mary Cheney into this?
Next you'll blame the homophones...
I've been screaming at e-mail friends all afternoon with the same point Atrios has voiced: people in the press KNOW what's going on -- why the bland and content-free coverage? The country's in the tank economically and Iraq is costing a billion a week -- is this not a story? THE story?
Two things. A handful of billionaires, backed by about 200 friends, have financed an organized movement of thinktanks, public relations firms, and media outlets, to miseducate the public. We now call it the RightWing Noise Machine.
Two. One of its most successful ploys is affirmative action for RightWing positions. Reporters do indeed tend to be liberal, because dealing first-hand with facts is a liberal experience. University research supports liberal views again because the facts incline you that way. So the RightWing has successfully demanded equal time, or more than equal time, for their anti-factual positions. People don't ask whether the news story is accurate, or the university report is correct -- the puppet masters have them screaming that the reports CONTRADICT RIGHTWING IDEOLOGY. So the facts are dismissed; balance is two sides (one side if they can get away with it).
We let this happen with the takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Republican Party. Just sharp partisan politics, we thought. The Democrats were playing nice right up till Dean broke out of the mold. Is it too late to fight back? Is the result already in the computer, as the AP story of tonight's so-called debate is already in the newsrooms?
We'll see around the end of the first week in November.
A friend in Oklahoma wrote today that he was afraid to put out a sign for the Democratic candidate. He lives in a little gated community that's viciously antiLiberal, against anyone they see as different. (They're very nice as long as they don't hate you, which I guess is why my friend got sucked into the place.) His neighbors have bought Bush's "good vs. evil" paradigm, which, of course, gives the good guys a blank check as they attack the evil ones. Here's a quote from the current Harper's Magazine:
[quote] There is no such thing, Freud states, as “eradicating” evil. The impulses that constitute the “deepest essence” of human nature are “neither good nor bad” in themselves. He will condemn actions but never the drives from which they stem. It is a central tenet of psychoanalysis that if we can tolerate what is most disorienting—-disillusioning-—about our own unconscious, we will be less likely to act on it, less inclined to strike out in a desperate attempt to assign the horrors of the world to someone or somewhere else. It is not, therefore, the impulse that is dangerous but the ruthlessness of our attempts to be rid of it.
Freud knew that the fierceness with which a group builds and defends its identity was the central question of modern times. But unlike the leaders of our “present-day White Christian culture,” he knew that no group is safe from the dangers of conviction, and that a nation that frees itself from doubt and refuses to question its own motives and acts can place the world in peril. -—Jacqueline Rose, The London Review of Books, 8 July 2004 (reprinted in Harper’s Magazine, October 2004)
I cite the foregoing, not because it’s Freud (Freud was a mythmaker and not strong on evidence), but because it seems right. It supports my feeling that Satan appears in human affairs only when people band together to destroy Satan (cf. the Salem witch trials, McCarthy’s demonizing of subversives, many of the campaigns against child sexual abuse). Absolute conviction gives permission to harm others. Search for truth is good, but thinking you possess it is a license to kill.
(William Temple,later an Archbishop of Canterbury, observed in a lecture in New York City that there is no way to distinguish between profound religious conviction and sheer prejudice. Both arise from the gut, independent of evidence.)
This, I think, is the drug being peddled to our poor country—-the joy of power that comes from belonging to the group that is absolutely right, a joy compounded by almost knowingly embracing things that are factually, logically wrong. You offer your own puny individual perceptions and sentiments as the sacrifice that bonds you with the larger group, a group so powerful that it sweeps away mere facts and reason.
Boy, that’s Satanic.
35 children are killed in Baghdad today, and Wolf lead today on CNN with the BREAKING NEWS that Tony Blair was having a routine heart procedure, and he'll be back at work on Monday.
Royko
Well, now we know that one white man is worth more than 35 Iraqi children to Wolf and CNN. To the credit of the other media I heard the bombing came first, even before the "debate".
Am I being unfair to Wolf and CNN? You know, I don't think as I lie awake that's going to bother me. I'll probably be thinking about those children and the ones who were maimed.
What the fellow writing the email is complaining about is that the Republican Party is sinking into or evolving into a form of occultism.
mud duck,
your second point is the Krugman line: If Bush said the Earth was flat, the headline in the media would be "Shape of Earth: Views Differ".
Facts mean nothing - every right-wing theory no matter was unfactual must be given equal time in the media. Sadly, that is where we stand today in the US.
>present the mess, they present the Rove-tinted fantasy version that he gives to them. I wish I knew why - it would be easier to figure out what to do about it
Because they are afraid. Not so much of Rove or even Murdoch, but reality. They have lived comfortable lives in the world's premier county in a time of great stabilty, and that is changing and they are not ready to face it.
This is why they can't bring themselves to tell us the truth about Iraq. This is why every mainstream report on the economy constructs a silver lining for virtually every statistical thunderhead.
Just remember the great Drivin' and Cryin' lyric:
Mother America is brandishing her weapons/She keeps us safe and warm by threats and misconceptions
Once you let go of the "misconceptions," you also let go of being "safe and warm." They just aren't ready.
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