Posted by
Conservatarian on Monday, October 02, 2006 4:46:30 PM
Weekdays are for politics, weekends are for football. I tuned out all the major newscasts Saturday and Sunday, and concentrated on what really mattered, the pigskin. Over the weekend, I had heard a little whiff of some sort of Congressional scandal, but (what else is new?) I really wasn't interested, since the Redskins had just taken the lead.
This morning, I had to flip through three cable news channels over a 20-minute period to get the whole story. From the disjointed media orgy of CNN and Fox I could only discern there was some sort of scandal, and the media was predicting the downfall of the Republican establishment. Some hack Congressman from who knows where had stepped down, although neither Robin Meade, Soledad O'Brien, or the goofballs at Fox & Friends would tell me why.
Eventually, one of the Fox anchors (Kelly Wright, a seriously underrated journalist) actually mentioned the cause of this week's uproar concerning Rep. Foley. But the media's behavior around this scandal has revealed how little integrity they have anymore. Instead of just reporting that Foley was engaging in wholly
inappropriate behavior with several ex-Congressional pages, the viewer
gets a long, winding and rambling discourse from the talking heads on
how this affects Republican Congressional races. CNN, the Big Three, even Fox, are more concerned about predicting what will happen in the future than just telling you and me what happened yesterday. They are no longer in the news market, they are firmly entrenched in the spin market, and they are all too egotistical, or maybe just lunkheaded, to concede this.They have relinquished their role as town crier in order to become the sentinel (so they perceive) of the American people, a role in which their political ideology shines through.