did not jut enough. Guillaume the Conqueror (who did not have proper Dad) he hate Engalanders who he call "chinless" who have silly places called Cockermouth and Icklesford. Gillaume took London and most of rest and Engalanders then become French, after being Danish Jutlanders (but not jutting enough in opinion of real ones). Now Engalanders have grumpy man from Escotland ruling them and lady called Elizabeth whose Daddy's grampa was German wearing crown. Engaland is very ickle and not-so-new but I have girlfriend there called Ivy Leaky and she one hot potato but not like Dan Quayle.who is Amerikan and in CIA.

every media market is defined and subdivided...and wants its biases validated.

I admired Walter Cronkite and watched his nightly news religiously for years -- until the Iran Hostage crisis. That's when Cronkite decided to close every newscast with a reminder of how long the Americans were being held. He'd intone something like:

"And that's the way it it. Day 379 since Americans have been held hostage in Iran."

Although Reagan was already on the ascent, and Carter was being criticized for being a wimp, I can't help thinking Cronkite's gratuitous, nightly reminder that Americans were being held captive under Carter's administration didn't work to intensify public opinion and play a role in the outcome of the 1980 election. It not only swept in Reagan, but the turned over the Senate firmly into the control of the GOP, who went on a deregulation spree that's still reverberating in our economy today.

By comparison to what we have today, Cronkite was a god.

However critical he got, which was rare, he never broke out of his frame. He never questioned the capitalism, imperialism, and corporate control that plagues the country.

During the Cold War, the nuclear build-up, the empire-making, the U.S. state terrorism of overthrowing governments and assassinating leaders, we never heard Walter question the structures of power and arrogance.

Excellent.

Truth in Journalism is not about audience truth (perceptions), journalist's truth (earning more money by satisfying audience truth), but about the actual truth of the moment (portraying accurately what is happening visually in the context of what is happening in the moment factually).

When papers are able to relate factual events visually and in written words then sign me up for that newspaper.

Personally, I still mourn the loss of who, what, when, where, how, why, and to what extent journalism.

RIP

This was a terrific analysis of the current state of American journalism. In an era when everyone from Sean Hannity to the correspondents on "Entertainment Tonight" identify themselves as journalists, it isn't hard to see how degraded the profession has become. It isn't only the news that is important any more, but also the inflated self-importance of the journalist as well, right down to Norah O'Donnell blogging about her footwear and toenail polish, for heaven's sake.

All too often opinion has replaced fact, and because of a multi-channel, 24-hour news cycle that was not existent in Walter Cronkite's era, reporters are now more dependent than ever on sources and connections: if, say, the White House doesn't like what someone reported about health care reform, the administration can shop around for a more sympathetic news voice. So there isn't much to be gained by challenging or criticizing the status quo.

The present journalistic construct, particularly among cable news programs, is to present a news item, then have two disparate, often shrill voices, pro and con, argue it into the ground (this is even prevalent on the MacNeil-Lehrer report), the idea being that between the two opinon-makers/pundits/experts you will be able to draw your own conclusions, but, in fact, almost always your pre-held suppositions are only fortified by one side of the argument.

Reporters are also much more inclined to adopt the verbiage of press releases: for example, one man's "surge" should have been a journalist's "troop escalation." The same with "embedded," "shock and awe," "stimulus package," etc. All too often present-day journalists are in the position of cheerleaders (Brian Williams' day at the White House being a particuarly odious example), rather than challengers.

Amy Goodman? Left-wing shill for the Ford Foundation and a host of other billionaire-financed private foundations? She took $150,000 from the FF in 2004, when the ACLU turned it down over 'anti-terrorist financing clauses'. For a $4 million/year outfit, they don't really do anything but respin stories dug up by other reporters.

Salon? Hardly this is social fluff devoid of content, other than covering up for the new round of Washington elitists, or rather the reclaiming of lost ground by neoliberal powermongers like Hillary Clinton - and Salon has ignored the Honduran coup, by and large, not that it isn't a juicy story:

According to The Hill, Honduran business leaders are hiring Washington lobbyists to convince members of Congress that they should support the removal of Zelaya, who was ousted in a military coup two weeks ago.

The Honduran branch of the Business Council of Latin America (CEAL) has hired Davis, a former White House special counsel and well-known supporter of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The organization is a network of Latin American business leaders that is akin to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The neoconservative empire-builders have been tossed out, and here come the neoliberal empire-builders - but I don't see any of the 'progressive journalists' doing anything that different from the 'corporate journalists' when it comes to real investigative reporting.

For example, does Salon or DemocracyNow! ever considering using their budgets to give airline tickets and money to young journalists who are willing to risk their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan and a host of other countries, like Cronkite did in Vietnam? Surely, Amy Goodman can spare some of her $4 million a year budget to do that, right?

I don't see that happening, do you? Why? Because the left-wing private-foundation sponsored 'press' in the U.S. is just as much a fraud as the right-wing version. It's called propaganda, and it's not really that clever - although I will admit, a lot of suckers have fallen for it.

Serious questions have arisen about how Democracy Now!, begun and developed with the resources of Pacifica Radio and grants from the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation, the J.M. Kaplan Fund and others, suddenly became independent and the effective property of Amy Goodman without recompense to Pacifica. This transfer apparently included valuable assets such as trademarks, ownership of years of archived programs, affiliate station access, and more.

Who wants to bet that the whole operation is a front group for neoliberal corporate interests who don't care whether Republicans or Democrats get into power as long as they get their way? Recreate '68, however, was an obvious effort by Goodman to attack Democrats and thus raise the chances of Republicans, a role she also played in the 2000 elections along with Ralph Nader.

So no, you guys are not Walter Cronkite. Neither are the talking heads at the major networks - the real reporters who were on the ground (Lara Logan) were actually attacked by the rest of the media for telling the truth about the situation.

The game is a fraud, and we know it is a fraud because anyone like Cronkite gets kicked out of the corporate/non-profit media system as soon as they appear - Wall Street and the Pentagon have learned something about media control since Vietnam, after all.