Glenn:

There is no duty to investigate it, no duty to find out what is true -- they just repeat what they hear, from government officials and their sercet sources, and that is it

One huge and tragic example of this was the way that the Bush Administration politicized science. This began almost immediately. The first science journal to write about it spoke up within a matter of weeks--long before 9/11. But as long as it was just scientists and science writers raising the complaint, the political writers wouldn't touch it.

It was only once Henry Waxman had his minority staff compile all the information into a report that the political journalists would write about it--very briefly, of course--and when they did so, of course, it was in the "he said, she said" format that was custom made for the Republicans to dismiss as a baseless partisan attack.

Now, as Waxman's report indicated, the Bush Administration had a number of different strategies, but what it all amounted to was politicizing and corrupting the scientific advisory process--which is directly parallel to what they did with the intelligence-gathering and analyzing process. In short, if they had simply followed the lead of science writers, and put 2 and 2 together, they would have known well in advance what was happening with the intelligence misleading us into war---something that the M$M still has not figured out to this day.

Because, of course, they don't want to know. Which is the other side of this: On the front side, you abdicate your responsibility to (1) investigate, (2) analyze and (3) come to empirical conclusions on your own, and on the back side you deny that you could have done anything different, without becoming a "political advocate."

Which is, quite frankly, why I don't give a damn about being called a "political advocate." I'm proud to do advocacy journalism. That only means I have a higher standard to get the facts right. Because I can't hide behind, "Oh, well that's what I was told, so how was I to know?"

The ultimate travesty, of course, is that there is so much more to any story than just two sides. Their whole methodology is premised on pre-ordained failure.

It's why they do car chases and stuff like that so well. It's really simple, just like their minds.