Why I Can't Stand the Media (Sometimes)

The good news is that the Senate overwhelmingly rescinded Bush's ability to appoint U.S. attorneys without Congressional approval--one of those 'terror-fighting' 'improvements' that somehow found its way into the Patriot Act. But the coverage of the investigation is awful.

Video: Administration under siegeBUSH VS. CONGRESS? - President vows to block subpoenas of his aides

MSNBC is headlining the investigation into the U.S. Attorney scandal as "Bush vs. Congress?" They have turned this into a pissing contest, when the actual story is about the potential abuse of the justice system for partisan purposes.

But seeing whose dick is bigger is far more entertaining, I suppose.

While we're on the subject, is there any doubt that the reason these USAs were fired was that they either refused to prosecute politically-motivated cases that were unsubstantiated or that they were investigating Republicans? While it remains to be seen if the firing is illegal, you would have to be delusional to think that replacing competent USAs in the middle of these investigations, six years into the Bush presidency, is the ethical thing to do.

That's ultimately what bothers me about the coverage: the belief that something isn't unethical unless it's illegal (unless it involves Democrats and blowjobs, of course). Can we impeach the D.C. press corps?

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Can we impeach the D.C. press corps?

In principle, you can out-compete and replace them.

In practice, that's tough to do. Entertainment is all, and people love their fresh supply of brown, squishy, and steaming TV news.

There is hope that the fragmentation of culture that the mainstream media bemoans so much will help. One can hope that the ability of everybody to be a "journalist" will continue to erode the dominant and sole-source position of the major media outlets. We all wring our hands about the disunification of culture that results from the fact that we don't all watch the same stuff-- but at least different messages have a chance to get out and catch on that way.

At the moment, though, blogs are by and large read only by people who have some inclination to agree with them (e.g. the scienceblogs.com readership is mostly people who were already predisposed to be particularly interested in science), with a small smattering of griefers (people who read the blogs they hate for the express purpose of complaining).

-Rob

Bush's statements on this matter call into mind an old saying about the pot and the kettle. He's calling the Senate partisan when it looks like most of the Republicans in the Senate are supporting the investigation! Yet the media is turning this into Bush vs. the Democrats and doing lots of he said/she said "reporting" with no analysis of facts.

Can we impeach the D.C. press corps?
I second that, and I believe as bloggers we are already doing it. News is not just being published anymore, it's being publicly discussed. And as bloggers we can talk about "pissing contests" while some journalists are burning to call things by their names but can't, else the big dick (I meant donkey) at their news desk won't publish their story. So thank Gd for blogs!