“How can "news" organizations refuse to address -- just completely ignore -- accusations which fundamentally indict their behavior as "journalists"?”

Uh… isn’t it precisely because the accusations “fundamentally indict their behavior as ‘journalists’?”

While I wholeheartedly agree that the media has been acting as shills and propagandists, every (increasingly often) time I see a valuable expose such as GG’s today I keep waiting for an explanation that actually identifies WHY the media does this and WHO is making it worth their while.

It isn’t just that Joe Klein set out to write a flagrantly false piece about FISA, or even that TIME let him – but when Klein uses factually false statements as the basis for the conclusion that House Democrats are being “beyond stupid”, then both Klein and TIME stand by their propaganda even when the factual falsity is exposed, well, why would they do that? Who wants them to and has the clout to make them, notwithstanding the fact that such journalism is contrary to any sense of journalistic propriety and the ethics these people probably want to argue they respect?

Follow the money? Who is providing the incentive, and in what form is the incentive provided, which succeeds in convincing otherwise intelligent newspaper reporters and editors to engage in the kind of propagandistic pandering reflected in the NYT piece? What is the economic or other motivation, and who is waiving that carrot or wielding that stick, which convinces the rest of the “main stream media” that they are better off ignoring this disclosure or, for that matter, continuing on with business as usual?

It’s all well and good to refer to the Beltway Elite, the Serious folk, the Punditocracy, the Power Elite. In years gone by, maybe we heard of The Trilateralists or a “vast right wing conspiracy”. But WTF? Somebody has got to be actually doing something, offering something, threatening something, to achieve the level of distilled dishonesty that has been passing as “news”. It is not worthy of note or comment that the President of the United States acknowledges authorizing torture?

This isn’t really a rhetorical question. I’d really like to know GG’s views on this. Does Dick Cheney not only possess the darkest of evil souls but ALSO have the wherewithal to dictate individual and corporate action without it being apparent? Who does? Some of the things being disclosed seem to defy rational justification, yet they go on, and what gets criticized by the blogs is the symptom of the media’s (in)action, but not the disease of the motivation for the inaction.

Any takers? Or is this just too obvious: “they” are bad and we are good? Does that help?

Update: the carrot that was "waived" is now playing AAA for Shreveport. Please substitute a new carrot, which is now "waving" in that paragraph. Sorry.

Great work again, GG. It seems to me that the mentality reflected by NBC and Williams not only is echoed by, but actually contibuted to a world view that encourages, the Joe Kleins of the world to shake off criticisms of blatantly false propaganda when it is detected by simply asserting they have "neither the time nor the expertise" to know what they were talking about.

Brian Williams is basically an empty suit mouthing other people's thoughts on the air, and the only latitude he has is adding the "personal affirmations" bucking up the "reliability" of the people NBC puts on the air to shill for the Administration's positions. Quite true, as Iokannen says, that the more meaningful quote in all this is from the NBC exec who just "isn't interested" in whether the speakers are biased. So, since all this "bias" stuff was in fact noticed in a magazine at the time, isn't Williams/NBC's current refusal to address it really just Klein having "neither the time nor the expertise to know who's right" or Jon Alter excusing media reiteration of McCain myths as justified because "we're just reporting it, if the Democrats take issue we'll report on that"?

GG's post concludes with the term "deeply corrupt" to describe the media response to the NYT recap of the shameful coverage of the Iraq war. But isn't the current media (non)response, or Williams' belated and belligerent comment, more an affirmation of "business as usual"? And it's the "business as usual" perspective that is the most troubling. If these people can't recognize corruption when they're doing it, no wonder they have little problem defending their dissemination of blatant propaganda because it's just not their problem to care about whether it's dishonest or false.

How comforting.

...without a single hooker to discuss? If that doesn't convince those who control the Mainstream Media that there are people who care whether reportage is honest and unbiased, what else could?

Blanket and retroactive immunity for felonious and unconstitutional invasions of privacy is an affront to the Constitution of the United States, an attack upon the Rule of Law (without which this country cannot function as a democracy), and really really stupid.

I'm shocked, shocked to learn that the apparent victory over this evil plan might be subjected to a disingenuous attack by those disgruntled by their recent failure to obtain passage of the Bush immunity plan. ["Your chips, sir."] Oh, thank you very much.

Target the legislators who try to sneak immunity back into any discussion of FISA renewal! Blue Dog, Methodist, Guamanian... this is about the Constitution and the oath of office. I wish a lot of things, including stem cell development of implantable spines for Democratic legislators -- but at the moment, donating to a dedicated ad campaign to shed the light of day on those who would still try to sneak immunity back into FISA is the best political dollar that can be spent, IMO.