The Daily Howler

I've added a link to The Daily Howler at the left (just below the medieval painting of Justinian holding a Byzantine cathedral). I highly recommend it. It tackles, better than almost any other resources, the depravity of the Washington press corps. The major reason the national debate is so effed is the media and its complete inability to resist propaganda and outright lies. See, the press corps comes up with a script, and then it sticks to that script no matter what. Often two or more scripts intersect to create a Tarantino-esque melange of silliness and a vacuum of information.

Let's try an excercise. The Bush administration releases a White House report on the environment. That report has several passages excised (blacked out, like in spy movies). those passages deal with Global Climate Change. The Press asks, "Hey, what's this about?" The White House says, "The report accurately reflects administration views." It comes out that those passages were excised because they refer to human causes of Global Climate Change and the White house ran them by the energy industry, who in turn though they were bad for business so the White House censored a public report. What does the White House say to this allegation? The White House says, "The report accurately reflects administration views." Some Republicans get on TV and say that the jury is still out on human causes of environmental degradation. Every reputable scientist in the last 50 years gets on and says, nope, humans are the major cause of climate change. The press says, well there are two sides to every story. The President has a press conference and says that he will not change the report because of political pressure (the report he changed, remember, because of political pressure) after all, "The report accurately reflects administration views." Resulting story: Bush stands firm in face of political pressure on this extremely controversial topic.

Let's analyze. The first script here is the balance script. That's where the lazy-as-all-hell media decides that their responsibility isn't to inform the public, but to blindly report both sides even though one side is clearly false and any tiny amount of digging will reveal that. The second script is the bold leadership script. That's where every time the Bush Administration does something stubborn, it's bold leadership. The third script is the political script. That's where every time a group contradicts another script, they are just playing politics or applying political pressure (which I thought is how we're supposed to do it in a democracy) and that's a bad thing. In this case, scientists saying the report is wrong. After all, as many of you know physicists, chemist, and geologists are for the most part rabid communits who have no respect for slow methodical inquiry. But Republican congressmen from coal producing states are well known for dispassionate scientific analysis. Thus a question resolved by scientists years ago becomes controversial.

Shorter example. Media script 1: Bush is a very popular president with a lot of political power. Media script 2: Clinton was incredibly controversial with most Americans have at best mixed feelings. Reality (found after five minutes on the internet): Bush three months after reelection, 45% approval; Clinton at the same time, 63% approval.

So go read The Daily Howler every day...a great nation deserves as much.