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June 15, 2006
Media res.
The other day I had the misfortune of meeting the author ofthis book. The man was a hack...
His hackery was made evident when he would discuss the most recent pair of elections and say “somehow” the public was grossly uninformed. “Somehow” the public thought Al Gore was a liar. “Somehow” the public believed John Kerry was a monster...
I’ll grant that the Democratic campaigns in each case were poorly designed and run. At the same time it is the media’s job to separate fact from fiction. If the public is grossly uninformed—if Americans still believe that we’ve found WMD’s in Iraq, if Americans believe that Al Gore claimed to invent the internet (he didn’t), if American think John Kerry took two different positions on the same bill (he didn’t)—the media is failing to separate fact from talking point. Our democracy suffers as a result..
Of course, the same point can be made in a well crafted cartoon:
Posted by Andrew at June 15, 2006 12:26 PM