No. I don't think there is one overaching, simple explanation as to why the media behaves as it does ("Corporate capitalist bosses want $$$$$$ -- GOP gives them $$$$$!").

How did you find out the Bush administration was eavesdropping on Americans illegally? How did you learn that it was maintaining secret prisons in Eastern Europe? Or engaging in rendition? Or torturing people? Or neglecting Walter Reed? - Glen Greenwald

Money is not an overarching explanation for media behavior, but it is an overarching explanation for media consolidation. The individuals who own and control the media are, almost without exception, conservative in their politics and supportive of the narrative as it exists. Just look at the names of these companies: GE, Disney, News Corporation, Time Warner, Viacom, AT&T, Vivendi, Clear Channel. These are some of the largest companies in the world.

When a CEO has that big a business to run and the difference between $100 and $400 million in stock options is share price and market cap, it is in that CEO's interest to be damn sure he or she does everything in their power to have regulations, taxes and other categories of media assets (e.g., IP, bandwidth access, etc.) in their quiver. That's where Republicans come in. Republicans fully understand the quid pro quo rules of corporate capitalism. The last kind of politician the CEO of a media conglomerate wants to see is a trust-busting, re-regulating, truth in advertising, power to the people politician.

I agree with you that there are many journalists who have integrity and will speak truth to power even if they place their careers in jeopardy by doing so. It's like the adage about cops. 10% are good, 10% are bad and the other 80% want to be good. I think this applies as well to journalists.

The MSM is a many-headed beast. You are doing important work in trying to keep journalists honest. But that is just one head of the beast.

The MSM rhetoric attacking the Democratic congress seems to be aimed entirely at individuals as opposed to policies. Why, for example, the rant against Pelosi's scarf? Why accuse her of negotiating with terrorists? Why not rant instead against the new policy on the part of the Democrat's congressional majority not to trust a single thing they are told by the Bush administration? That is the reason Reid and Waxman and Pelosi and others are insisting on documents and recorded testimony and face-to-face conversations (both domestically and internationally) instead of the "trust me" rhetoric from the administration and its supporters. That undeserved trust is what got us into this huge mess in the first place. No thinking person could possible trust this administration or those in the media who support its narratives. That is the reason Pelosi is wearing a scarf, and talking to other governments and doing the diplomacy the President and his staff have failed to do.

Give me a break with the Pelosi Logan Act routine.

You don't hear me calling for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, et al to be tried at the Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity under international law and for impeachment here in the States, do you? Well?

There's a very good reason why I don't. We don't have a supermajority in Congress. Otherwise, I would.

Glenn Greenwald writes an article on the MSM's coverage of Nancy Pelosi's trip to Syria and now, as if by magic, we are talking about homosexuality. Why stop there? We could talk about public education, taxes, women's rights, global warming, immigration, Ford vs. Chevy, onions or any of a large number of other fascinating topics all on this one thread.