failure of the media

Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks nails the shortcomings of the national media in failing to clearly state What Happened. As he says, the national media likes to say that there are two equal and different sides to every story and that People Just Disagree when in fact, on many issues, a clear majority of the evidence suggests one side is right and the other is wrong. The media, however, likes to encourage talking, regardless of how inane or mindless. So they downplay the fact that the truth might be clearly on one side. This is truly demoralizing to those of us who follow the news quite closely and place great value on judgments being made on the basis of evidence, rather than pretending that there are two equally valid claims as to what happened. Uygur and The Young Turks are perceptive-and funny-commenters on the American scene.

Katie Couric

Well, it seems things are not bad enough for Katie Couric to call out the Bush administration on the war. In this interview with Marvin Kalb of the Kennedy School of Government, Couric says that "unless something is really egregious", it's not her role to call the government on it. I'm just wondering how many dead soldiers, how many lies, how dire the Civil War, how corrupt the Iraqi government, how degraded and insecure the Middle East, how downright FUBAR the whole situation must get before Ms. Couric does her job.

It's pretty ironic because she did admit just recently that she felt some heat-though really, is that all it takes to dissuade corporate journalists (rhetorical question, don't really expect answer) from asking some questions? (And has Katie Couric ever really done a tough interview? I think that is a Kafkaesque question). And with regard to the Petraeus report, she said recently that she saw what the military wanted. So she admitted several weeks ago that she had been propagandized. Then in this more recent interview Couric says that unless things are "egregious", she won't report on them. But this suggests the Platonic story of the cave. If you're in a hole and you know you're in a hole, how can you question the severity of what is going on outside? You've already admitted that you're not getting an unvarnished view, so how can you question whether you truly understand whether what you're seeing is untainted or unmediated by outside influences? Katie Couric does not ask tough questions, and I really don't expect a whole lot more at this point. I'm jaded enough that my expectations are quite low. But to have to tolerate the dog-and-pony show of her distortions and half-truths is intolerable.