But there’s only one who is the most trusted man in America.

To a certain extent, the Oh So Worthy of Posting (OSWoP) article reflects what a long-missing-friendly newswriter told me via email. (The spot where newswriter used to live might still be hers, but it doesn’t look like it; it looks like it was co-opted by a non-blogger after newswriter vanished. On the other hand, maybe she just gave up, because at least one of the old posts are still “findable.”) And if she wasn’t enough, there were numerous studies that contradicted the old canard. (Here’s one.)

At any rate, the gist of the OSWoP article is that the news doesn’t have a liberal bias. Rather, the constant drumming on that theme by “news” organizations such as Faux News has convinced a lot of people it does, while simultaneously cowing real reporters. The result is watered-down milksoppish “news” — or rather, entertainment masquerading as news — and a rise in the conservative slop substitute.

There’s really not much that’s new about this, except for the willingness of real news reporters to be cowed. After all, have you ever looked at any of the old “broadsides”, “pamphlets” and “gazettes” that were being published around the time of the Revolutionary or Civil Wars in the United States? The big “difference” — to the extent that there is one — is that these modern “not really news” programs appear to dominate cable and the airwaves. True news-reporting appears to be a thing of the past; in reality it’s just very rare and difficult to find. You probably won’t see it on TV, cable, or satellite.

I’m sure this is accentuated by survival instincts and the fact that fewer people today actually read their news. So “broadcast” news dominates. And broadcast news is all about ratings. After all, without ratings, satellite, cable and television stations don’t get advertisers. Without advertisers, they don’t get money. And money, of course, means power, which is what it’s always been about for most people — including both the new- and old-fashioned gazetteers.

Good reporters (one might try to argue) shouldn’t care about these things, but there are ideals and then there is reality. And the reality of TV is that reporters don’t own the media; they work within it. Someone else owns it. This doesn’t just mean that someone else pays their salaries. It means someone else gets to decide what actually gets “published.”

When it comes down to it, though, it’s not reporters who should take the blame for not standing up to the likes of Faux News. It’s us; the viewers and the readers.

Because when it comes down to it, if human beings were smart enough to care about reality instead of rubbernecking over emotionally-based/emotionally-charged “shows” like those presented by Faux News, then reality would, in fact, be different.

In a nation where voter turn-out is 28%, it’s just not fair to blame the news media masters for their desperate moves aimed at getting your attention.

Just as we get the government we deserve, so, too, do we get the “news” we deserve.

It’s hard to know these days whether “they” in the last sentence is the Bush Administration, which repeatedly uses the news of horrible terrible things that might just possibly happen somewhere in the universe, maybe, if everyone isn’t properly behaving. And properly behaving, of course, means leaving the Administration alone to do whatever it wants, whether that is collecting your phone records (and millions of others, but you really only care about yours, right?), or mounting cameras around the towns in which you live (to keep you safe, of course, because the world is suddenly such a scary place!) to watch “just in case” there’s a crime.

Or maybe the cameras are just to remind you that anything you do could end up on the news, where you will be used to help keep other people scared.

“They”, of course, might be the “news” media. Having learned from the Bush Administration the value of scaring people, and having realized just how well it keeps folks tuned in to their stations, everything that happens these days which might possibly maybe somehow sorta turn out to be a harbinger of horror gets tons of airtime.

Case in point: Sometime this morning, someone might have heard some gunfire at the Blackburn Building in Washington, D.C. Could it be terrorists? Should you be terrified?

Whatever you do, just keep watching the news. We don’t really know what happened, “they” repeated for the entire hour I sat at the club this morning, trying to read over my breakfast and their breathless “newscasting.” We just know that someone thinks they heard gunfire. Two people in a heightened state of fright after this had gone on for some time (and just, apparently, as it was about to die down [no pun intended]) said they may have seen a gunman in the gym there.

On the other hand,

It certainly is calm and controlled at this point…. The police do not seem overly concerned that there might be a gunman loose at this point. — Reports of gunfire, gunman prompt Capitol lockdown (May 26, 2006) CNN.

Said the Chief of Staff of one Representative:

I’m guessing it’s a car backfiring or balloons popping. — Reports of gunfire, gunman prompt Capitol lockdown (May 26, 2006) CNN.

It might not be a car backfiring, or balloons popping. It might be that someone slammed a car door very hard.

Just in case, though, you really should be frightened and glue yourself in front of the television.

And don’t forget to ignore whatever else may be going on in Washington.

UPDATE (Post time: 1:30 p.m.): Bob Marcotte tells me that CNN is now claiming the “gunshots” were not a backfiring car, popping balloons or slamming car doors. They were worker’s tools.

Oh, those evil scary workers, frightening people without cause!

UPDATE (Post time: 5/27/2006, 9:30 a.m.): Well, thank goodness the “news” organizations stayed on top of this for all those hours. Otherwise, people would never have been scared at all. Turns out the “gunshots” were probably air hammers being used by workers repairing an elevator. If the “news” hadn’t made sure that this was a high-priority story for so long, American citizens would not have been kept on a state of high alert and we might never have known that an elevator in the Rayburn Building was well-maintained. Thank you again, “news” organizations!

In that show, 4400 people, over decades of time, disappeared from the face of the Earth. There was rampant speculation that they had been abducted by aliens and, of course, there were even more people who felt that those who believed such stories were fruitcakes.

In our own time, however, we have seen that it actually is possible to make people — and other things — disappear.

For example, under the Bush administration, the short-but-interesting lists of things which have disappeared are these:

Accountability.

It started from the git-go, when the Supreme Court of the United States decided that Florida election officials did not have to account for all the votes cast in the 2000 presidential election. From there, the Supreme Court ducked (pun intended) the issue of whether the Bush Administration had to account to the American people for allowing oil and other energy executives to craft a secret United States’ Energy Policy which, near as anyone can tell, called for pushing gasoline prices to $7/gallon before Bush finally has to leave office. The case was returned to the Court of Appeal, which ruled that the government of the Administration, by the Administration and for the Administration could keep this secret away from the People. The latest episode, of course, was graphically — and tragically — demonstrated by Hurricane Katrina.

Integrity

This one is more complex, because the Bush Administration has done a phenomenal job of convincing Americans not only that this ex-coke-addict who routinely chastises his staff for telling the truth is a man of integrity, but that he’s God’s right-hand man.

It’s scary to read things like this quote from a Newsweek story about the man at the top:

It’s a standing joke among the president’s top aides: who gets to deliver the bad news? Warm and hearty in public, Bush can be cold and snappish in private, and aides sometimes cringe before the displeasure of the president of the United States, or, as he is known in West Wing jargon, POTUS. — Evan Thomas, “How Bush Blew It” (September 19, 2005) Newsweek.

These indications of Bush’s failure in the area of integrity are bad enough. But if you take into consideration that he could not have “accidentally” told lies about the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, that alone should convince you. Here is a man who not only deliberately mislead the American people, but worked behind the scenes to get other countries to lie, as well. It’s not enough that his lies have sent thousands of Americans to their graves; when government officials have told the truth, he has offered to kill their wives.

Reality

The Bush Administration has repeatedly denied — or tried to re-make — reality. Their efforts frankly The newest border on the delusional. Bush Administration joke concerning lightbulbs would be funny, if it weren’t for the fact that it clearly reflects this new “reality.” Just today, Jennifer Loven reports over at ABC News that President Bush said “he is encouraged by the increasing size and capability of the Iraqi security forces.” As Loven notes,

The sunny presentation of the situation in Iraq is part of a renewed push by the administration to win support for the war effort from an increasingly reluctant American public. — Jennifer Loven, “Bush: Iraqi Military Showing Progress” (October 1, 2005) ABC News.

Unfortunately, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, General George Casey, says it’s just flat out not true. This is the second time this week that Casey has tried to force a reality check. But the Bush Administration won’t hear it. Expect Casey to be silenced or transferred any day now.

Christianity

Huh? What? Christianity disappearing? It’s important to note what we’re talking about here. I’m discussing Christianity-with-capital-C, the sort of Christianity where people actually live their beliefs. Today’s christianity (lowercase c) exemplifies comments made by Isaiah several thousand years ago:

The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men. (Isaiah 29:13 (NIV).)

Jesus himself is reported to have quoted Isaiah, adding, “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you.” (Matthew 15:7 (NIV).) It’s hard to refute this when you consider this recent item from the Los Angeles Times online:

Of the nations studied, the U.S. — which has by far the largest percentage of people who take the Bible literally and express absolute belief in God (and the lowest percentage of atheists and agnostics) — also has by far the highest levels of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. — Rosa Brooks, “The dark side of faith” (October 1, 2005) Los Angeles Times.

Truthful Reporting

But one thing which has gone missing cannot be totally blamed on the President.

We depend upon reporters to deliver information to us about what is happening in the world. Only an informed citizenry can make appropriate choices at the polls. Only people who know and understand what is happening in the world can work to change it.

But, increasingly, the news has focused on getting people excited about…The News. Not only do we no longer even get some stories, but more and more the stories upon which the news organizations dwell are stories about which not much can be done. And, even there, we’re receiving more opinion than reportage.

So it is that the main story on the CBS News website today is about a bombing of a shopping center in Indonesia. The average American can do nothing about this. But it sure gets us stirred up. We can’t safely navigate past an accident without our heads spinning like Linda Blair in the Exorcist. How could we possibly not tune in to see the carnage on CBS?

If you press through the muck that is their front page, you might eventually find a link to stories of political corruption and the recent indictment of Tom DeLay, arguably at least one of the most powerful Republicans in the United States.

Visit CNN and the main story there is — well, I’ll be damned! — it’s a bombing of a shopping center in Indonesia!

ABC? Indonesian shopping center bombing. MSNBC? Oh! Look! Someone bombed a shopping center in Indonesia!

Hey, at least MSNBC gave us some good news, too! President Bush’s popularity slide is tapering off. Even though Tom DeLay was recently indicted, Bush’s current level of support is holding steady.

But that feeling that everything at home is okay is at least partly manufactured by the New Media. After all, as I said above, an uninformed citizenry cannot effectively mobilize in order to change and improve our society. And when 500,000 people trying to get the rest of the nation’s attention and focus us on the need for change can simply disappear, there’s no doubt The News will be good.

In a world like that, it’s only reality that will suffer.

Perhaps Bush isn’t such a bad President after all; in the end, he’s setting a shining example for how to handle reality when it turns out to be not what you wanted.

It’s a video of a newsman with backbone. As Erik put it, “Ted Koppel getting his spine back…and it’s great.”

That’s an understatement. Perhaps one of the more interesting parts comes about three-quarters of the way through, when the Director of the Federal Emergency Mismanagement Agency states, “We didn’t know there were people at the Convention Center until today.” Koppel essentially asks, “Are you people so out of touch with things that you don’t even watch the news? Our reporters have been reporting about the Convention Center for days now!”

Yes, President Bush and the federal government have been slow to get aid and rescue to the people of New Orleans. This is no surprise, since his Administration helped cause it, but folks there are dying in the streets nearly a week after the Hurricane Katrina devastated the city.

Stunned residents are picking their way through corpses that have lain in the sun rotting for more than four days. People in the Convention Center remain without food, water, or other supplies. Gangs are roaming the streets and people continue to be victimized.

As the Mayor of New Orleans put it, “Now get off your asses and fix this. Let’s do something and let’s fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country.”

Or perhaps the President hasn’t finished reading The Pet Goat.

And they’re getting lots of help from their conservative buddies:

EVAN THOMAS ROLLS OUT another defense, one often seen after a publication has been caught out in a disastrous story that it first tried to present as an exclusive, and that is the we-didn’t-publish-this-false-story-first defense. Journalistic scoops that turn out badly suddenly aren’t scoops anymore but just previously reported information. Here’s Thomas: “Newsweek was not the first to report allegations of desecrating the Qur’an. As early as last spring and summer, similar reports from released detainees started surfacing in British and Russian news reports, and in the Arab news agency Al-Jazeera; claims by other released detainees have been covered in other media since then.” — George Neumayr, Newsweek Blows Smoke (May 17, 2005) The American Spectator.

Imagine that. The stories of Quran Flushing were reported earlier by eyewitnesses and published in the foreign press.

So now we know it couldn’t possibly be true. The story Newsweek published isn’t new. It has been reported several times since the first eyewitnesses were made available to the world again — no wonder the Bush Administration doesn’t like letting anyone out of Guantanamo — but when the world finally reacts, our government says, “Not true! Newsweek is irresponsible!”

The American Spectator piece is particularly interesting in its attack upon Newsweek. In the paragraph immediately following the one I quoted above, Neumayr states,

In other words, the Muslims should have rioted earlier? Or maybe Newsweek is saying that last week’s rioting was opportunistic, the work of fanatical Muslims eagerly looking for Western offenses as a pretext for violence? The latter explanation would bring Newsweek dangerously close to a position its multicultural sensitivities forbid: a refusal to excuse Islamic violence as a legitimate reaction to Western criticism or practice. — George Neumayr, Newsweek Blows Smoke (May 17, 2005) The American Spectator.

Huh? Say what? How do you get from Newsweek saying that the story had been reported before to Newsweek saying that “Muslims should have rioted earlier”? Even more bizarre is Neumayr’s supposition that “maybe Newsweek is saying…” and then going on to note that this shows Newsweek is taking a hypocritical and untenable position because they’ve (rightly) taken Jerry Falwell and his ilk to task for their comments about Muslims.

Lest anyone be confused, Neumayr didn’t report some fact, that Newsweek did say what he decided would bring them dangerously close to his own view. He said, if we imagine that Newsweek said X, then that brings them dangerously close to Y. I mean, if we imagine that the President of the United States said he was moving to Saudi Arabia, then that brings him dangerously close to saying that he likes green cheese.

This is wrong in two ways. First of all, while we do wish the President would carry his love-fest one step further and actually make the move, there’s no connection between Saudi Arabia and green cheese. And second, the President didn’t say he was moving to Saudi Arabia. Similarly, even if Newsweek said that “the rioting was opportunistic[,]“ there is no connection between that and taking the same position that Jerry Falwell takes.

Jerry Falwell has publicly stated that the founder of Islam was a terrorist. He has endorsed Pat Robertson’s view that Islam is not a religion of peace. Even if we accept Neumayr’s imagined interpretation of Newsweek’s position, it does not speak to the character or even the core of Islam. But, remember, as Neumayr put it, “maybe Newsweek is saying….”

Scramble, scramble, scramble. We must do everything we can to ensure the public goes into an uproar whenever someone reports what the United States is doing. We must convince the public that it is the one who reports these things that is responsible for inflaming the Muslim world.

It couldn’t possibly be the people who are doing the things that are reported.

The saddest part, though, is this: The Bush Administration tricked Americans into going to war by manufacturing lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction. The now-Attorney General of the United States said that the Geneva Convention on Human Rights was antiquated and did not apply anymore and so we shoved lightbulbs up Iraqi asses and forced Iraqi prisoners to simulate sex acts. Iraqi prisoners have been murdered. And after news reporters told the world about that, some people said that the soldiers should have killed the reporters. Given these known truths I do not find it surprising in the least that we would flush a copy of the Quran down the toilet as a torture technique. But Newsweek, under heavy pressure for “causing” an uproar in the Muslim world, has retracted their story. They’ve said it was a mistake.

I believe there was a mistake.

It just wasn’t Newsweek that made it.

The White House says Newsweek magazine took a “good first step” by retracting its story that U.S. investigators found evidence interrogators at Guantanamo Bay desecrated the Quran, but it wants the magazine to do more to repair damage caused by the article. — Newsweek Urged To Repair Damage (May 17, 2005) CBSNews.com.

I’m not sure how many people remember this, but in the old days, news stories came with “bylines.” A byline told you who the reporter was. Over time, various reporters developed reputations. Readers learned that if a particular reporter reported on something, we could “bank” on it. It was a good way to keep track of the difference — back when there were differences — between real news reporters and the National Enquirer types.

Today, the only real difference between the National Enquirer and “mainstream” “news” media is that the government doesn’t seem much interested in owning the National Enquirer — and, unlike the mainstream media, the National Enquirer isn’t much interested in being owned by them.

For those who are unaware, Newsweek magazine reported recently that the Muslim “bible,” the Quran, had been used as a prop in torturing Muslims. Rumors are that the Quran was placed on and in toilets in a deliberate attempt at psychological torture. When the story broke, parts of the Muslim world went totally nuts — as would fundamentalist Christians if Muslims had taken the Christian Bible and flushed it down a toilet — and the United States began blaming Newsweek for the problem.

Let’s get something straight here: The odds are that the United States government is lying. Remember, the United States is currently being run by a group that declared the Geneva Convention on Human Rights to be antiquated and said it was okay to torture prisoners and treat them inhumanely in violation of that treaty. This is the same group that was not only responsible for Abu Ghraib, but has subsequently done everything in its power to disavow that responsibility; it’s as if Abu Ghraib happened all by itself. High-ranking officials got slaps on the wrist, while lower-ranking people following their orders received quite serious punishments, presumably to show the Muslim world we were serious about not engaging in not following the Geneva Convention. And, of course, it’s anomaly.

Well, unless you count Guantanamo.

Now the United States government wants Newsweek to undo the damage Newsweek did by reporting what the United States did. This needs to be identified for what it is: Bullshit.

As I said yesterday, it’s time to stop blaming the messenger. The United States needs to stop using such inflammatory and illegal tactics to get what it wants. Americans need to wake up to what our government is doing to the tens of thousands of prisoners we’ve been rounding up around the world. While we’re at it, how about waking up to what our government is doing to our reputation around the world. It’s not Newsweek who is to blame when the Bush Administration flouts world opinion and engages in their Crusades in ways that would make the Crusaders of old proud. It is our government.

Our government is not only engaging in behaviors that would normally be considered inhumane, but they have lied to us. And now, a new memo has surfaced in Great Britain, showing that the United States deliberately “fixed” intelligence reports to convince the American public and Americas allies that Iraq must be attacked. The result? The Whitehouse says the British are “flat out wrong.” (Hey, at least Bush didn’t call the British “liars.”)

This is our government.

And each of you who remain silent and each of you who fail to remind your representatives that you are citizens and you vote are equally responsible for what it does.

It doesn’t take much more than five minutes for you to contact your representative today and let them know what you think.

Do it today.

The truth is that everytime real news gets reported, the government — and numerous of their sheep-like followers — start an uproar. The result is that whenever real news is reported, the news organizations get another lesson in what they are not supposed to do.

Most of them learn their lessons well, with the result that Americans seldom get real news anymore. Instead, we get stories about steroid use in baseball. About the only real news about our government we’re allowed to receive is news that paints Democrats in a bad light. For example, we’re barraged with stories about Democratic filibustering aimed at convincing Americans what horrible people those Democrats are. Left out of the story are two important facts: 1) The nominees offered up by the President should not be judges; everyone knows it, including Republicans, but the theocratic lobby is too strong to resist these days by anyone except the underdog Democrats. 2) Perhaps more importantly, the Republicans used the filibuster as much or more when they were the underdogs. And watch the shit hit the fan if Republicans succeed in doing away with the filibuster just in time to lose a few seats in the Congress as people finally start awakening to what the Republicans are doing to our country. “He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 24:51 (NIV).)

But, for now, forget the fact that the press frequently panders to the political aspirations of our President’s party for the moment. What inspires my post today is the recent Newsweek “admission” that it was irresponsible. Because it reported the truth. Or, as I’ve seen some other websites write things like this lately: Because. It. Reported. The. Truth. This point deserves that kind of emphasis.

Newsweek reported that U.S. military investigators had found evidence that interrogators placed copies of Islam’s holy book in washrooms and had flushed one down the toilet to get inmates to talk. — Newsweek Apology In Quran Flap (May 16, 2005) CBSNews.com.

Subsequent to the publication of the story, there has reportedly been massive rioting in Muslim countries. (In keeping with the tradition of not reporting news Americans shouldn’t hear, you’ll only see reports of the rioting if you read stories about Newsweek’s apology; the apology is apparently the news and the rioting is a mere incidental supporting fact.) Muslims are understandably pissed off.

To put things in perspective — because so many Americans have trouble understanding why Muslims get upset about things like Americans forcing Muslim prisoners to simulate sex and Americans flushing the Islamic Bible (Quran) down the toilet — just imagine that some Muslims had collected a bunch of fundamentalist Christian Bibles and flushed them down the toilet. For some of my readers, it will require both brain cells to imagine the possibility that anyone would consider the Quran to be on an equal level with the Bible for purposes of this scenario; the rest of us readily understand how such a thing might be upsetting. I don’t even want to see a Christian Bible flushed down a toilet — and I’m one of those hated Jews who sees Christianity as an illegitimate (and perverse) rip-off of Judaism.

But let’s understand something here. Newsweek reported the story after checking facts with Defense Department officials. Before the story was printed, no one denied that the Quran had been used to cleanse prison sewer systems. One Department of Defense official declined to respond; another responded, challenging a different part of the story, but not the Quran Toilet claim. In California, and many other legal jurisdictions, there’s a concept known as the “adoptive admission.” It’s based on the common sense idea that if someone hears a falsehood that reflects badly upon them and they do not challenge it, this constitutes an admission on their part as to its truth. How does that common sense view apply here, when an official denies one claim in a story, but not another?

Now, after Muslim outrage and rioting, the U.S. government is claiming the story is not true. We have here one of two possibilities: Either the Defense officials deliberately set up the newspaper, or the story is true, but the government is claiming it’s not in order to quell Muslim outrage. And, after all, a government whose President kisses and holds hands with his Saudi lover — not that there’s anything wrong with that; I’m all for anyone expressing their affection towards anyone in any way that makes them happy — but, as I was saying, a government whose President kisses and holds hands with his Saudi lover is probably pre-disposed to quell Muslim riots before they overflow (pardon the pun), causing a problem even for Saudi Arabia, whence all good terrorist-pilots come.

Given the amount of crap this Administration has tried to cover up, before being forced to admit it, my inclination is to believe the story is true. After all, how hard is it to think that an Administration that believes sodomizing people with lightbulbs, forcing them to simulate sex — even murdering them — are valid torture techniques, will also think that it’s a good torture technique to desecrate the Quran? “Talk, or this baby goes down the toilet.”

But the strategy of attacking newswriters and journalistic outlets which dare print the truth isn’t new. It goes back at least to the Iraqi War — you know, the one with the rising body count that is officially over? During the war, the United States reportedly kidnapped independent journalists who dared try to report news that hadn’t been filtered through the U.S. military. (Another story, by the way, that you really only got to read if you took the time to seek out foreign newspapers, or bloggers reporting what they’d read in foreign newspapers.)

It also isn’t limited to stories about war, Iraq, President Bush’s continuing program of self-enrichment through manipulation of the oil markets, etc.

A Spokane newspaper is facing criticism about the ethics of a sting operation in which it lured the city’s mayor into meeting a consultant posing as a gay teenager in the paper’s investigation of molestation allegations. — Reed Stevenson, Sting operation under fire in Spokane sex scandal (May 12, 2005) SignsOnSanDiego.com.

Imagine that! A newspaper used an undercover reporter to get a story! But let’s not be outraged at a rabidly anti-gay Republican leader who not only hypocritically sought out homosexual encounters on the Internet, but knowingly attempted to liaise with a minor! A Republican mayor of Spokane, Washington, is a child molester? Let’s go after the newspaper that reported it!

Fact is, Americans, it’s well past the time we need to stop blaming the messengers. America’s leadership has significant issues. They range from inappropriate sexual behavior with minors to inappropriate sexual behavior towards prisoners to inappropriate behavior…period. They are compounded by a government that insists on secrecy, feeds fake news to the public, and attacks anyone who reports the truth. (Anyone remember Paul O’Neill? Maybe Plan of Attack? The real reason for the war? How about the more recent revelation of the British memo on how Bush carefully mislead the American public to war?)

Rather than curse reporters and stick our heads in the sand, we need to start holding our leaders accountable.

It doesn’t take much more than five minutes for you to contact your representative today and let them know what you think.

The Theocrats do it constantly. If you don’t speak up, it’s only their voices that are heard.

By the way, that rule for determining when Americans are lying isn’t limited to oral reports. Maybe we should just say, “How can you tell an American is lying?” Answer: “He or she is communicating something.” That’s why I check as many sources as I can when someone makes a suggestion to me that I blog a particular topic. It’s also why most of what I write here is unabashedly my view, my opinion, on matters, rather than any attempt to function as a newspaper meant to inform you about facts you might not already know.

This whole latest “news” debacle is just one reason why the aggregation of “news” — which increasingly isn’t news anyway; just another form of entertainment at best and bald manipulation at worst — into the hands of the few Rupert Murdochs of the world is a bad idea.

CBS News today affirmed that it is unable to prove it did not mislead the public when it “reported” a story about Bush’s military service. They have thus virtually guaranteed that the American public will be unable to obtain information about the issues leading up to the election. Instead, more fuel is added to the fire about things that really are only tangentially important to the campaign.

In a statement, CBS said former Texas Guard official Bill Burkett “has acknowledged that he provided the now-disputed documents” and “admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents’ origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source.”

The network did not say the memoranda — purportedly written by one of Mr. Bush’s National Guard commanders — were forgeries. But the network did say it could not authenticate the documents and that it should not have reported them.

“Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report,” said the statement by CBS News President Andrew Heyward. “We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret.

“Nothing is more important to us than our credibility and keeping faith with the millions of people who count on us for fair, accurate, reliable, and independent reporting,” Heyward continued. “We will continue to work tirelessly to be worthy of that trust.” No Byline, CBS: Bush Memo Story A ‘Mistake’, CBS “News” Online, ¶ 4-7 (September 20, 2004).

A little late for that, isn’t it, Mr. Heyward?

As I said, this will create a nice diversion as everyone dives deep into a discussion of whether or not Bush actually was AWOL from his required duties while others counter that Kerry was busy shooting up enemy combatants, or posing for pictures to hang in Hanoi.

Think character is important in a candidate? Okay, then let’s get someone with character — I don’t know, maybe Ralph Nader — to run.

It seems to me that what we need to be talking about is what I mention nearly every time I talk about how you should vote in November: What’s happening in your life? Are things better since Republicans took office? Or are they worse?

Now, ideally, Americans should be educated about what it means to be a citizen within a democratic republic like the United States used to be. That’s not going to happen. We don’t get the education in school and 99.9% of the public isn’t going to pursue such an education after they’ve escaped what, to them, was the unnecessary task of formal education they suffered through before becoming burger flippers — or better-educated technicians, like doctors.

So until or unless you can take the time to learn about such things (and for those who desire to do so, a good start is my article on “Re-Adopting the Constitution”) the next-best thing is to take a serious look at your own personal life. Since the proper functioning of a democratic republic depends, to a great extent, on how well the interests of the citizens are represented, looking at how well the tenuously-related circumstances of your own life have gone, if done by a large enough aggregate of people, is a suitable substitute for due diligence to your duties as a citizen. And this is one area where you just have to trust that Kant’s Categorical Imperative is your best alternative to doing the difficult work of learning something, so go for it.

Whatever you do, stop listening to the “news” to try to figure out how to vote. Until they all stop lying, or functioning as partisan propaganda arms of the parties — not necessarily the same things — you’re better off acting only based on what things you can actually see for yourself.

Oh, and the reason I didn’t just call the article “The End of Integrity”? Because one day I hope to sit down and do a more detailed piece on how the pervasive lack of integrity in America is damaging us all; I wanted to save the title for that day.