Bush is a Symptom, not the Disease

Learning of the "robo-calling" scandal -- it's currently the most popular story on the Washington Post website (see previous post) -- I return to a question familiar to Jotman readers: how come I can’t find anything about the Robocalls issue on CNN’s website? Blogger Josh Marshall was asking the same thing when he wrote:

CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS and Fox are each ignoring the GOP's nationwide campaign of false-flag robocalls meant to harass voters and fool them into thinking the calls come from Democrats… That's because the powers-that-be in the mainstream media are in the tow of the Republican party.... You have to understand that and absorb that before you can set about doing what's necessary to change it.

If the Democrats don’t do as well this election as expected, it will not because -- as Thomas Friedman put it in his column this weekend – Americans really are just as “stupid” as Bush and Rove think they are. Rather, it will have everything to do with where Americans get their news. This election has shown, as never before, the extent to which the commercial US news media is failing American democracy. I’ve tried to highlight this problem on Jotman, focusing on CNN coverage of key stories. Perhaps those postings (or "rants" as some of you call them) may not have made for as stimulating reading as my interview with a freedom fighter, accounts of exploration in Northern Burma, or photoblogging of the Thai coup.

However, I have posted extensively on CNN’s news coverage of the election campaign because I am absolutely convinced that the most important issue facing the world is a dysfunctional US news media. The tenure of George W. Bush is merely a symptom of this underlying disease.

I blog, in part, because I believe the blogosphere can help to expose the depth of this crisis.