MSMformation

After my recent post concerning the death of public broadcasting, this is going to sound a bit like I'm proclaiming it Deathwatch, day 2 - MSM, but really it's more like a roll call of the good, the bad and the ugly in media current events. Let's start with the good.

Bill O'Reilly - I can hear the piercing scream from the blogosphere, "You said the good and O'Reilly in the same sentence!" Don't panic. The good is the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board, which stood up for itself and accuracy in the media and to its very readers in an Editorial Journal today. Seems recently O'Reilly held the Chronicle up for ridicule based on information that was not merely inaccurate, but entirely erroneous. For each falsehood O'Reilly boasted the HC was able to present fact-checked, accurate rebuttals. And then to its readers the Editorial Board made this demand, "...take the time to read the editorial carefully, rather than relying on someone else's careless characterization of its contents." Seems more than a few people complained based on O'Reilly's lies, without checking the source material for themselves first. This is the legacy dittoheads leave future generations of red voters, encouraged by Bush, the church and conservative media - don't ask questions or look for your own answers, stay the course, support the troops, fear God, drink the Koolaid.

The bad comes to us courtesy of ABC News. I know you've heard what hard work journalism is nowadays. In the words of ABC's The Note today, "Brides gotta run, planes gotta stray, and cable news networks gotta find a way to fill a lot of programming hours as cheaply as possible...We say with all the genuine apolitical and non-partisan human concern that we can muster that the death and carnage in Iraq is truly staggering. And/but we are sort of resigned to the Notion that it simply isn't going to break through to American news organizations, or, for the most part, Americans...What is hands down the biggest story every day in the world will get almost no coverage..." because it is too hard to break away from the left teat that is corporate media milk money and the right teat that is administration swill and do the job that has been done by news people for the last century, report the news. When a majority of our country is getting their information either from Bill O'Reilly and his ilk, or from MSM outlets run by the Gang of 500, we as a nation are in big trouble.

Which brings me to the ugly Michael Medved, a talking head for the Salem Radio Network, who had an on-air meltdown arguing with Hans Riemer of Rock the Vote. Medved repeatedly challenged Riemer to back up his claims that: Bush favors privatization of Social Security; that he defines privatization as "allowing the individual worker his or her choice to set aside money in a managed account with parameters in the marketplace"; and that there are members of Congress who support the complete privatization of Social Security. Reimer provided complete documentation for his ascertains, to which Medved replied, "Liar, liar, liar, liar, liar, liar." And this guy has 1.8 million listeners. Scary.