GG, Absolutely true, and I absolutely agree.

What other specific and concrete examples can be offered of media failure? One that springs to my mind immediately is the issue of vote fraud and corruption in both 2000 and 2004. Inadequate focus and follow-through on such issues leads to growing cynicism and mistrust of all media.

WeikuBoy, your point is well taken and I will certainly try to abide by it. I live in a rural area and depend on dialup service, so this multiple page format for comments is very difficult for me as well.

data's awe-awe Donald duck and the garden 'hoe' can say, anymore, mania!

Donald duck wants a good Meal and cries out begging for thee Best Food for thought.

chip and dale like m.b.f.'s. "Run run," cried dale, "Help help," cried chip. Chip and Dale came back to eat, and Jill came tumbling after m.b.f.? she 'um hungry?

"Boo!" "Help! Help!" cried Mr. Bush. no Run Run Sr. Bush! m.b.f. always has something good to eat from a well tended 40X60 backlot garden.

Mr. Bush invited m.b.f. to the White House for a left-over Friday lunch? m.b.f., and Karl Rove began to eat and talk while politico's-loco Americano began to sit down, chat with chip and dale...to LISTEN with Mr. M.B.F'er's chow-time-chat. It was past mid-noon, and left-over snacks, was all the neo-con's could cook up? Fig nut-tin? yep.

Look, chip and dale, will always come back for more with m.bf., and even escort m.b.f. to the White House? I hope.

m.bf. can be a invite at the next "journalist" bird-bash-busy-bath Farty-Party? Chip and Glenn and Dale will stay home and wee, wee, wee, may flatulate and hope you, emissary m.b.f., have fun in the world's stead. Statesman, m.b.f.. PLEASE REPRESENT "We People" and also:

We Thank YOU de'mm'fer fer all being a good bunny rabbit Easter egg roller's. End the war.

Keep the 'Roll With It' going. And who cares if m.b.f. rolls chicken, ostrich, emu, goose, or quail eggs? m.b.f., remain a safe distance away from 'you know who?'

Thanks to WeikuBoy, we have this one-liner...

"...Bush's favorable singling out of Politico told me all I needed to know about it..."

Now WeikuBoy intended this statement to mean that, from a progressive point of view, the Politico has been and is destined to be a conservative, democrat punching rag.

Notice, however, that a conservative might say precisely the same thing. Why is that?

The answer is simple if you think through the process by which George Bush came to know about Politico such that he would mention it publicly.

Of course, Karl Rove or Tony Snow would be the kind of person who would brief Bush on Politico.

You see, all these guys, George Bush included, is interested, as we are, in improving the quality of journalism in the US. And Bush requires that a monthly meeting be held to assess the quality of journalism in America.

So, Karl prepared a powerpoint entitled "(The) Campaign 2008: How to Improve Quality Journalism".

Among the slides presented was one on the need to improve the quality of journalism on the 'net. Fox is great for TV viewers but for 'net browsers, some new venture is required. "And, Mr. President", Karl said, "we think Politico is the kind of institution and has the kind of journalists with (enough) establishment respectability required to make it a vehicle for improving quality journalism concerned with the 2008 campaign."

And George was impressed. He's an avid searcher and reader of quality political writing on the 'net himself. He was just surprised that he hadn't encountered Politico himself yet.

In fact, Karl was so emphatic about the importance of Politico for journalistic quality improvement that Bush wrote the web site name down so he'd remember to give kudos to the Politico team at the next news conference.

Does anyone seriously doubt for a moment that George Bush has seen a powerpoint by or had a conversation with the Rove people or the Tony Snow people about Politico? You know, to improve the quality of journalism in America.

Right there with everyone mentioning the impossibility of objectivity. Every step of the way, thinking is subjective. Personally, given the connectionist, linguistic nature of our brains, I don't think it's possible for a human to have a non-emotional thought. The only hope something resembling objectivity is for us is not to say, "This is objective reality," but "This is reality as I see it." As Wittgenstein aptly described it, the world, or reality, is "everything that is the case."

A letter writer complained about other LWs burying the original LW's letter. Please, take a step back and remember this is a mostly unmoderated forum with almost no minimum standard for entry. Also remember that what you believe to be important is not necessarily what a fellow Salon reader finds important. I read your earlier letter; I found it inaccurate and not very useful (David Gregory, for example, has frequently criticized the White House, and called them on various lies and inconsistencies.) Given its brevity I wonder at your outrage. Try having a little humility about your letters.

Re: polls and the poor job of the media. Speaking of the 70% in late 2003 who still believed there was a Saddam-9/11 link, Greenwald writes: "That heinous fact, by itself, should have provoked a major crisis in political journalism -- a desperate effort to find out what went so fundamentally wrong." Even worse are the poll results from Zogby that found that as recently as 2006, 46% of Americans still clung to that belief.

The problem is that most people are lazy thinkers. The idea that gets in first with the most is the one they stick with, and it takes a lot to dislodge it. This places even more responsibility on the shoulders of those purporting to report reality.

longtime reader and admirer. Second or third time poster. For a while now I've noticed bloggers of the more liberal bent citing that 70% statistic as clear evidence of the administration's deception, and the media's compliance in disseminating that deception. Don't get me wrong. I basically agree with you about this administration's mendacity, and I have no problems calling them liars when it comes to the issues of, say, Iraqi nuclear weapons or the link between Saddam and 9/11.

I've always had a different take on the 70%, however, and one which still represents a clear indictment of Bushco. But I don't see that 70% as necessarily being evidence of the administration's success in deliberately misleading the nation. I see it as being a function, principally, of the nation's distraction and common sense. The reason 70% of American thought there was a connection between saddam and 9/11 was because they didn't really have the time to study the issue of who did what -- they had kids they had to get to school, bills to pay, etc -- but full well understood that the administration was hell bent on going to war with Iraq and ousting Saddam. As such, they naturally ASSUMED that Saddam was responsible for 9/11, as that was the only rational for war that made sense. In other words, Bush and Cheney weren't really called upon to lie so bald-facedly. They simply took advantage of the fact that no one would expect the administration to do something as stupid as attack a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. A subtle distinction, but worth noting, and one which lays sliightly less blame at the media's doorstep. The media could have jumped up and down all they wanted. I'm still not sure anyone (with kids) would have believed tha administration would try to pull something so off target.

And now I must put children down for naps...