Media Conglomerates: Asking The Tough Questions.

The news of the last couple of days (besides Dan Rather's memogate) has been the contrasting picture painted by the Bush and Kerry campaigns concerning the situation in Iraq. Not surprisingly the Bush camp see's the situation as good and getting better; the Kerry camp see's the situation as bad and getting worse. And the national media? They have no idea who's right! Oh, they all have reporters on the ground there, but they don't leave the security of the green zone unless they are "embedded" along with the army or marines when they go out on patrol. And even then, their reports have to be censored by the Pentagon before broadcast and I'm not saying they shouldn't be censored for operational security reason's, it just sort of defeats the purpose of having a free and independent press if the reports are "presented" with such a close collaboration with the subject(s) of the story.

And this is why the media are left scratching their collective heads trying to discern who is portraying the most accurate picture in their campaign rhetoric. The corporate media just want to be loved, (is that so wrong!) because they want viewers in the 18-34 (predominately white) demographic to help them harvest those precious ad dollars, which is, after all their raison-d'etre.

So the fact that more of our guys were killed in September (so far) than August, and more guys were killed in August, than July, either means things are going well, or not so well, I guess depending on who you believe, but don't look for any help from the national media trying to decide.

And on a related note, the media have rolled over and given up more of their autonomy for the so-called Presidential debates. (See Lefty's blog for more.) And the beat goes on....