Pigs And Lipstick And Bowling Scores And Lapel Pins And Windsurfing Tights

From The government, the media and Afghanistan by Glenn Greenwald:

Most striking of all is that the "issues" of least significance, of zero import, are the ones which receive the most attention in the "political debates" conducted by our media -- pigs and lipstick and bowling scores and lapel pins and windsurfing tights -- while the ones of greatest significance are virtually ignored. And that is highly unlikely to change between now and November.

Nothing Sacred

From God's Word by Wendy Kaminer:

Whether the media lead or follow cultural trends, they rarely, if ever, challenge them. The mass media cover religious belief faithfully, in accordance with conventional wisdom about its virtues. Mark Silk, author of Unsecular Media, observes that print coverage of religion "tends to be softball" because "a lot of readers go to church" and, in general, "newspapers and newsweeklies are not in the business of offending their readers."

I'm not arguing that the media should make a practice of attacking religious beliefs as mindlessly as it promotes them, airing the invectives of militant atheists along with the pieties of believers. I am suggesting that "nothing sacred" is a good motto for critics and journalists. It doesn't imply cynicism or nihilism, but rather a purposeful skepticism--a willingness to interrogate our most passionate beliefs and assumptions. Religions exert immense social and political power; how can we abdicate our responsibility to critique them? Religions are collections of ideas about God, and ideas should be subject to hazing.

Whatever Happened To "If It Bleeds It Leads"?

Selected bits from Reporters Say Networks Put Wars on Back Burner by Brian Stelter:

Five years into the war in Iraq and nearly seven years into the war in Afghanistan, getting news of the conflicts onto television is harder than ever.

“If I were to watch the news that you hear here in the United States, I would just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts,” Ms. Logan said.

CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.

Ms. Logan said she begged for months to be embedded with a group of Navy Seals, and when she came back with the story, a CBS producer said to her, “One guy in uniform looks like any other guy in a uniform.”

Both Ms. Logan and Mr. McCarthy noted that more coalition soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in May than in Iraq. No American television network has a full-time correspondent in Afghanistan, although CNN recently said it would open a bureau in Kabul.

Journalists at all three American television networks with evening newscasts expressed worries that their news organizations would withdraw from the Iraqi capital after the November presidential election. They spoke only on the condition of anonymity in order to avoid offending their employers.

Does this story give you a sense of deja vu? Well, perhaps this is the reason why.

The Liberal Media At Work

From CBS report on "mind-numbing" national debt made no mention of Republican-led Congress' years of deficit spending on Bush tax cuts, Iraq:

Further contributing to the national debt are the Bush tax cuts. According to a recent analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), based on Joint Committee on Taxation and Congressional Budget Office estimates: "Through fiscal year 2007 tax legislation enacted since 2001 has had a direct cost of $1.3 trillion." The CBPP analysis continued, "Because these tax cuts were not paid for, they are also generating substantial increases in the national debt. The additional debt now being built up will persist even if the tax cuts are allowed to expire on schedule."