Journalism Fail!

Regular readers of this blog know I've often railed against the "fake balance" we sometimes get from our friends in the media, when it comes to political issues. In fact, just yesterday I noted that I don't think the media is ideologically biased towards one candidate or the other, but the dance they go through either due to laziness or the desire to be fair, often results in extreme stupidity. Facts are facts. Sometimes one side is right and it's the media's job to point that out. Not everything should be open for debate.

This brings me to the video (h/t Daily Kos) I've posted below, which is a discussion between John Roberts, Paul Begala, and Alex Castellanos, involving the infamous Bridge to Nowhere. We all know that Palin supported the bridge before she opposed it (and even then she only opposed it because support was dead). John even plays us a clip of Palin and notes that it appears to end the argument regarding her initial support for the bridge. His next question about Obama falls under the title of "completely unhelpful to average Americans," but that's for another post.

What has me angry is the false debate. Palin keeps telling a lie. Paul calls her on it, and then Alex tries to act like the whole thing is up for interpretation. Now, obviously, I expect this from Alex. As a Republican surrogate, I suppose that is his job (though you have to wonder about people who lie for a living). On the other hand, John's job is to bring the people the truth, which in this instance, he did not do. After his initial statement about the bridge, John seems to hang up his journalism cap, later noting, "We still have 56 days to talk about this back and forth." To which an exasperated Paul replies, "This is the problem. We have this false debate when we ought to have at least agreed upon facts." Exactly. And that's how the interview ended. Unacceptable.

Look, I don't mean to pick on John here. He seems like a generally nice guy and after watching some of his work on both CBS and CNN, I'd say he usually does a good job. Unlike some people on my side of the partisan divide, I don't feel the urge to go all reactionary, shrieking about how he's a corporate stooge or in the bag for McCain. Even the best journalists can't be perfect all the time and John is by no means the only one I've ever seen do the fake debate/balance thing. But the stakes are way too high right now to just let this crap go by without notice. The media needs to step it up, get some balls, and do their job. Anyway, Paul actually wrote a piece for Huffpost related to this incident (though he seems to give John a pass) if you're interested.



As I said yesterday, I don't have time for a review of Wednesday's 360, but I did watch. It was pretty good. Well, the first hour anyway. I caught some of the retarded waiting-for-Palin coverage that they had in the second hour and had to roll my eyes. What a waste of airtime. I think I'd rather they just repeated the first hour. At least then new people tuning in might have gotten something of substance. Anyhoo, it's still up in the air for Thursday's review, but I'll probably have something for you.