Undercover In The Rotunda

John Ensign got the stakeout treatment yesterday, but the Senator wasn't all that forthcoming:

Confronted by the CNN team today, Ensign denied that he'd violated ethics rules.

"You can just see our statements on that," he said. "I think it's pretty clear. I said in the past I recommended him for jobs, just like I recommended a lot of people. But we absolutely did nothing except for comply exactly with what the ethics laws and the ethics rules of the Senate state. We were very careful."

Bash asked Ensign if he'd considered resigning.

"I am focused on doing my work," he said. "I'm gonna continue to focus on doing my work."

Ensign also said that he and his office "will cooperate with any official inquiries."

I would say that it's embarrassing for any politician to be subject to a stakeout. You don't look like the most innocent man that way. And it's good to see the cable nets doing some legitimate news-gathering. In fact, this resembles nothing so much as what Mike Stark's been doing on Capitol Hill for months now, confronting Republicans as they move around Washington. But Ensign got off pretty easily here. None of the core problems discussed in the New York Times piece were really given a full airing. It's hard to get all of that out in an impromptu interview, but the reporters could have been a bit more prepared.

CNN Could End The Birther Story Today

CNN is desperately trying to get themselves off the hook for Lou Dobbs' warm embrace of the Birthers. The President of the network declared the controversy "dead" today.

The website TVNewser reported today that Klein sent an e-mail to staffers of “Lou Dobbs Tonight” just as the program went to air, informing them that CNN researchers had determined that Hawaiian officials discarded all paper documents in 2001. A long-form birth certificate with details about the doctor who delivered Obama no longer exists, they reported. The shorter Certificate of Live Birth noting Obama’s birth on Aug. 4, 1961, that has been made public is the official record.

“It seems to definitively answer the question,” Klein wrote, according to TVNewser. “Since the show's mission is for Lou to be the explainer and enlightener, he should be sure to cite this during your segment tonite. And then it seems this story is dead -- because anyone who still is not convinced doesn't really have a legitimate beef.”

If Klein really thinks that Dobbs will just drop everything now, he's kookier than Dobbs himself. And he also shouldn't believe that this is no longer a problem. The Southern Poverty Law Center has called for Dobbs' removal. That would be an actual way to end all the speculation on CNN about this.

This is not the first time Mr. Dobbs has pushed racist conspiracy theories or defamatory falsehoods about immigrants. We wrote you in 2007 to bring to your attention his utterly false claim that 7,000 new cases of leprosy had appeared in the United States in a recent three-year period, due at least in part to immigrants. (The real number, according to official statistics, was about 400. Mr. Dobbs took his spurious information from the late right-wing extremist, Madeleine Cosman.) In addition, Mr. Dobbs has reported as fact the so-called Aztlan conspiracy, which claims that undocumented Mexican immigrants are part of a plot to "reconquer" the American Southwest. He has suggested there is something to a related conspiracy theory that claims the governments of Mexico, the United States and Canada are secretly planning to merge into the "North American Union." He has falsely claimed that "illegal aliens" fill one third of American prison and jail cells. And Mr. Dobbs has routinely disparaged, on CNN's air, those who have had the integrity to point out the falsity of these and similar claims.

Respectable news organizations should not employ reporters willing to peddle racist conspiracy theories and false propaganda. It's time for CNN to remove Mr. Dobbs from the airwaves.

That would surely add to CNN's credibility.

...wow, forget whatever good things I said about Jon Klein.

A Lou Point In American History

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I wish Dave Neiwert wasn't on vacation from Crooks and Liars this week, because I'm sure he'd have a lot to say about the mainstreaming of the ginned-up Birther controversy, particularly by one of his favorite whipping boys, Lou Dobbs. In the interim we'll have to settle for Eric Boehlert:

If James von Brunn weren't in a locked security ward at Southeast General Hospital in Washington, D.C., and awaiting trial for the murder of a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the 88-year-old racist and neo-Nazi might have taken comfort from listening to Lou Dobbs' syndicated radio show or watching Dobbs on CNN in recent days. Von Brunn would have likely felt some sense of affirmation from Dobbs, as the host began belatedly championing the cause of so-called "birthers," the angry band of right-wing conspiracy theorists who claim President Obama has not released a valid birth certificate and, in some cases, flat-out assert that he was not born in America and therefore is ineligible to be president of the United States. (Here's a good birther primer; here's the official right-wing defense of birthers.)

Had von Brunn been listening, Dobbs would likely have "spoken" to him. Just a few months before opening fire at the museum, von Brunn, apparently a proud birther himself, had done his best to spread the word online about Obama's illegitimate rule: "What is going on??? WHERE ARE THE GOOD PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY - ARE YOU OUT THERE???" [...]

Dobbs has certainly taken some heat for his recent birther turn. (He's "effectively destroying his career with this stuff," birther expert David Weigel wrote at The Washington Independent.) But there's more to this story than Dobbs. And the phenomenon in play isn't just about a birth certificate. And it's also not isolated or accidental.

Because, yes, viewed in a vacuum, the movement seems like the nutty fringe. But viewed in a larger historical context, birthers share obvious ties to traditional right-wing assaults on previous Democrats, and birthers have all the marks of a GOP Noise Machine creation. The movement is about a larger, more sinister attempt to paint Obama as illegitimate, foreign, and suspect (i.e. not like you and me). To portray him as "a gratuitous interloper," as radio host G. Gordon Liddy put it. As someone who isn't who he says he is. As -- let's face it -- the Manchurian Candidate, with all the evil connotations that come with it. ("WHO SENT YOU???" von Brunn demanded to know of Obama.)

And it's about the disturbing role media figures like Dobbs play when they act as the bridge -- as the transmitter -- between the radical and the mainstream. When they legitimize the craziness, if only in the eyes of the crazies themselves. As MSNBC's Rachel Maddow noted this week, "The home run for conspiracists of any stripe is when their ideas can leave the lunatic fringe and enter the mainstream."

There's really only one degree of separation between Dobbs mainstreaming the Birther movement and pictures of Obama as an African witch doctor. The media, in large part, has condemned this nonsense - Chris Matthews shaming that old fool Gordon Liddy today was painful to watch - but those who give it succor it sustain an extremist fringe who want to alienate the President as "the other," as illegitimate, as illegal. It plays to the beliefs of anti-government types and militia members and a dangerous element in American society.

As for Dobbs, who James Rainey picks apart here, CNN has a choice to make. Its own hosts have debunked this myth over and over. The network purports to call itself "the most trusted name in news." They can prove it.

For all the network's efforts to characterize itself as the real, unbiased cable news outlet, it continues to give Lou Dobbs a high-profile platform for obvious, unsupported madness. It makes Dobbs look like a loon, but more important, it's a painful embarrassment to CNN.

A network spokesperson distanced CNN from Dobbs' crazed radio show, and told Rainey, "On CNN, Lou is an independent reporter who covers stories that people are talking about, and often showcases issues that aren't being covered by the mainstream media."

For a network that keeps giving very large paychecks to a television personality who is misleading its audience with transparent craziness, this explanation needs some work.

The Famous Mr. Ed

Ed Henry has posted a breathless work of staggering back-patting about life inside the fast-paced world of asking pointless gotcha questions to the President, and how ya gotta think on your feet and make yourself as central to the story as possible:

At the first presser in February, I was about the 10th reporter the president called on. The economy had been chewed over so I went with a "sidebar" question about whether Obama, given his push for transparency, would overturn the policy at Dover Air Force Base preventing media coverage of coffins returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

It was a surprise line of inquiry. The president made news by saying the policy was under review -- and a few weeks later he overturned it.

I was heading into this event with the same strategy: make news on something unexpected (I won't tell you which topics I was working on cause it would ruin the surprise for a future presser or interview with the president).

Ezra has this right - Mr. Henry apparently got the impression from his journalism training that his role is to make news.

"Make news" is an interesting formulation for a reporter. I'm pretty sure the J School graduates are taught to "report" news, or maybe "explain" news. But creating news is rather a different goal. Inserting himself into the story, however, is well-aligned with Ed Henry's incentives. A lot more people know Ed Henry's name today than did a week ago. Henry can now write a column congratulating himself for standing tall in the face of the President's ire. It's similarly well-aligned with his industry's incentives. Though the American people might appreciate seeing the President offer a substantive explanation of his policy ideas -- 32 million of them, after all, watched the press conference for exactly that -- it's not the sort of thing that the cable channels can replay in bite-sized chunks. They're better off "making" a new news story that can lead tomorrow's Situation Room.

That's right. Journalism when caught up with commerce creates truly perverse incentives, where becoming the story is much more important than chasing the truth. Of course, the public has the choice of not participating in this by turning off their television every time Ed Henry is on. In a sense we get what we deserve, but in truth the alternative has not yet been tried.

Meanwhile, Henry's rant does have some value - it yielded this great parody about ed Henry visiting a Jack in the Box from Davenoon. Read in full.

The Death Of Information

One really harrowing consequence of the economic shock is what it's doing to newsgathering organizations. CNN just fired its entire science and technology team (hey, unlike MSNBC and Fox News, at least they had one to begin with). This includes the environmental unit that has produced the "Planet in Peril" specials, which at least treat the climate crisis in the context of providing information instead of as a political football. We can't just have political coverage on broadcast television and cable news - there has to be some factual basis for their stories.

In addition, multiple newspapers are likely to fail:

Newspaper and newspaper groups are likely to default on their debt and go out of business next year -- leaving "several cities" with no daily newspaper at all, Fitch Ratings says in a report on media released Wednesday.

"Fitch believes more newspapers and newspaper groups will default, be shut down and be liquidated in 2009 and several cities could go without a daily print newspaper by 2010," the Chicago-based credit ratings firm said in a report on the outlook for U.S. media and entertainment [...]

Fitch rates the debt of two newspaper companies, The McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co. as junk, with serious possibilities of default. It also assigns a negative outlook to both the companies and the newspaper sector, meaning their credit ratings are likely to deteriorate further.

As the Internet democratizes information, it also leaves gaping holes in investigative journalism, particularly local coverage. Having entire cities without newspapers is just demoralizing, not to mention the fact that McClatchy is an excellent outfit who frequently turns out great journalism. I don't know who's supposed to cover local stories anymore. Bloggers aren't profitable, though they do a bit of work. Newspapers are dying. Even public access cable is feeling the sting of the economic downturn, and that looks like it costs 4 bucks a day. But it's an important source of City Council and Board of Supervisors meetings, among other things.

We are beginning to live in a post-information society, where there's a lot of data but too much of it overlapping, and there are enormous gaps in what most busy people need to understand their neighborhood and the world. We can't have a functioning democracy without a vibrant fourth estate. It's terrifying to think that it's completely fading away.

Actual Headline

On CNN right now: Wife To Praise Husband.

I can't wait for the other hard-hitting breaking stories like "Hungry Man To Eat Dinner" and "Water To Remain Wet."

There really is nothing to cover here.

Hey guys, here's an actual story:

Today, the Obama campaign launched a new website aimed at simplifying the election process for voters as we gear up for a historic general election. VoteforChange.com is a new voter registration tool where voters across the country can verify their registration status, register to vote for the first time, or get the relevant absentee voting information for their state – all online.

"The number one reason that people don't vote is because they don't understand how easy it is to register to vote", said Jason Green, Director of Voter Registration. "VoteforChange.com, simplifies the process. It allows voters to register, check registration status, or find a polling location – all at the click of a button. By simplifying and explaining the process we believe that new voters will register, become involved in our movement for change and elect Senator Obama president in November."

I spoke with Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan about this today. The Obama campaign is really on top of this like no other candidate in the recent past, and he needs to be - the ground game is crucially important.

Welcome To Your Police State

The FBI knows who you are, knows your face, your fingerprints, your palm prints, all of your biometrics.

The increasing use of biometrics for identification is raising questions about the ability of Americans to avoid unwanted scrutiny. It is drawing criticism from those who worry that people's bodies will become de facto national identification cards. Critics say that such government initiatives should not proceed without proof that the technology really can pick a criminal out of a crowd.

The use of biometric data is increasing throughout the government. For the past two years, the Defense Department has been storing in a database images of fingerprints, irises and faces of more than 1.5 million Iraqi and Afghan detainees, Iraqi citizens and foreigners who need access to U.S. military bases. The Pentagon also collects DNA samples from some Iraqi detainees, which are stored separately.

And if they don't get you from an iris scan, they'll treat you like a Gitmo detainee for the crime of trying to shop in New York City:

Last Sunday I and a few other girls began our trip to New York. We were going to shop and enjoy the Christmas spirit. We made ourselves comfortable on first class, drank white wine and looked forward to go shopping, eat good food and enjoy life. When we landed at JFK airport the traditional clearance process began.

We were screened and went on to passport control. As I waited for them to finish examining my passport I heard an official say that there was something which needed to be looked at more closely and I was directed to the work station of Homeland Security. There I was told that according to their records I had overstayed my visa by 3 weeks in 1995. For this reason I would not be admitted to the country and would be sent home on the next flight. I looked at the official in disbelief and told him that I had in fact visited New York after the trip in 1995 without encountering any difficulties. A detailed interrogation session ensued.

I was photographed and fingerprinted. I was asked questions which I felt had nothing to do with the issue at hand. I was forbidden to contact anyone to advise of my predicament and although I was invited at the outset to contact the Icelandic consul or embassy, that invitation was later withdrawn. I don't know why [...]

What turned out was something else. I was taken to another office exactly like the one where I had been before and once again along wait ensued. In all, it turned out to be 5 hours. At this office all my things were taken from me. I succeeded in sending a single sms to worried relatives and friends when I was granted a bathroom break. After that the cell phone was taken from me. After I had been sitting for 5 hours I was told that they were now waiting for guards who would take me to a place where I could rest and eat. Then I was placed in a cubicle which looked like an operating room. Attached to the walls were 4 steel plates, probably intended to serve as bed and a toilet.

I was exhausted, tired and hungry. I didn't understand the officials' conduct, for they were treating me like a very dangerous criminal. Soon thereafter I was removed from the cubicle and two armed guards placed me up against a wall. A chain was fastened around my waist and I was handcuffed to the chain. Then my legs were placed in chains. I asked for permission to make a telephone call but they refused. So secured, I was taken from the airport terminal in full sight of everybody. I have seldom felt so bad, so humiliated and all because I had taken a longer vacation than allowed under the law.

On top of this you have the mainstreaming of Selma-era tactics, where peaceful protest and dissent, in this case the rejection of razing public housing in New Orleans, is repelled with tasers and mace, and it causes barely a ripple.

CNN showed the footage of the melee on a loop while Kyra interviewed reporters and local officials blathering on as she does above, never commenting on the fact that police were spraying people directly in the face with mace and tasering the crowd while protesters writhed on the ground screaming in pain, attended to by their friends and then being picked up and carried off camera.

We've become very comfortable with a police state in the years since 9/11. In the civil rights era, practices like this were what CAUSED change, at least in part. Now they scarcely carry anything beyond a shrug. "Don't tase me bro" was the quote of the year. Torture is actually being debated in civil society. We are dangerously close to losing ourselves altogether.

What Liberal Media

Read this story from the most trusted name in news, allegedly about Sen. Reid's backtracking on the FISA bill, and see if you can find any reference to Chris Dodd, his filibuster, and hundreds of thousands of calls and emails and faxes from ordinary citizens.

And this is the print story. On-air I think their top stories all day were an explosion at the Fox News building and something about American Idol dissing Britney.

Meanwhile, at the Washington Post who you expect to get the issue a little better, they at least mention Dodd coming off the campaign trail to filibuster the bill. But they somehow claim that effort "failed" because of the motion to proceed vote (um, the actual filibuster never even started). Then they list a couple meaningless attacks from the Senate Republican's campaign committee and baselessly assert that those attacks are "taking their toll":

Such attacks are taking their toll, Democrats conceded yesterday, as is the full-throated lobbying campaign of telecommunications companies and the Bush administration to protect them from legal challenges. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and some Democrats are struggling to find a compromise, perhaps by substituting the federal government for the phone companies as the defendant in ongoing legal action.

But even opponents of retroactive immunity conceded that the search for compromise could be going nowhere, as the Senate tries to complete its legislative session in the coming days.

"Those like myself, who are against immunity, really don't want to punish the phone companies as much as we want to hold the government accountable," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). "But it's very difficult to do that."

Um, if they were so devastating, do you think that Dodd's effort would have inspired the thousands and thousands of citizen actions on his behalf yesterday? I get that some Democrats like Schumer may be turning to mush, but the small band, the working minority of Constitutional, rule of law progressives, were not cowed by Republican attacks but inspired by them. That's why they won yesterday's first round.

This kind of irresponsible, context-free journalism is what makes it so hard for progressives in the first place. If the people never hear about those who are fighting for them, why would they expect it to be the case?

Which Is It?

Kind of funny watching the right simultaneously argue that CNN allowed the YouTube questioners to be all Democratic plants, and also that CNN allowed the questioners to be all Republican wackos. Surely it has to be one or the other, right?

YouTube Debate Lowlights

Booman offers the best roundup of the Republican YouTube debate that I've seen. I have only seen parts of it. But as far as I can gather, it was a lightning round of immigrant-bashing, historical revisionism (public opinion lost the Vietnam War), Jesus praise (apparently, there is a religious test for office on the Republican side), and anti-tax rhetoric. It was a Wednesday, the day of Grover Norquist's weekly conservative meeting, and so I guess that's why he got to ask a question even though he has unfettered access to Republicans. I already mentioned Rudy Giuliani's stumble through questions about his taxpayer-financed booty calls. You had Mitt Romney refuse to call waterboarding torture until he consulted with an executive for Blackwater. Mike Huckabee came armed with an excellent amount of one-liners that allowed him to sidestep substantive questions. Fred Thompson made it through the whole debate without sleeping, though there was one touch and go moment where someone had to hold a piece of glass up to his nose to ensure he was still breathing. And CNN didn't exactly cover themselves in glory by failing to disclose that one of their questioners is on a steering committee for Hillary Clinton.

All in all, I'm pleased with my decision to be somewhere else last night. Anyone else have any thoughts?

Who's The Plant

I think it is kind of serious, on a meta level, the Hillary Clinton may be planting questions at campaign events. I think it's far more serious that CNN is planting bullshit content-free questions in the middle of their debates and making it look like they're the authentic statements of "the people."

Maria Luisa, the UNLV student who asked Hillary Clinton whether she preferred "diamonds or pearls" at last night's debate wrote on her MySpace page this morning that CNN forced her to ask the frilly question instead of a pre-approved query about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

"Every single question asked during the debate by the audience had to be approved by CNN," Luisa writes. "I was asked to submit questions including "lighthearted/fun" questions. I submitted more than five questions on issues important to me. I did a policy memo on Yucca Mountain a year ago and was the finalist for the Truman Scholarship. For sure, I thought I would get to ask the Yucca question that was APPROVED by CNN days in advance."

The most annoying part is the fact that there must be "lighthearted/fun" questions in the mix, that it has to be a bucket to be filled. More from Maria:

"CNN ran out of time and used me to "close" the debate with the pearls/diamonds question. Seconds later this girl comes up to me and says, "you gave our school a bad reputation.' Well, I had to explain to her that every question from the audience was pre-planned and censored. That's what the media does. See, the media chose what they wanted, not what the people or audience really wanted. That's politics; that's reality. So, if you want to read about real issues important to America--and the whole world, I suggest you pick up a copy of the Economist or the New York Times or some other independent source. If you want me to explain to you how the media works, I am more than happy to do so. But do not judge me or my integrity based on that question."

Where you certainly don't go for real issues is the Most Trusted Name In News.

But of course, this is no different than the YouTube debate, where questions are submitted and CNN picks the ones they want to use. The point is that any media filter is going to shape the debate in a certain direction. Wolf Blitzer wants to be invited to all the cocktail parties, so he's going to make the debate about him. CNN wants to play gotcha, so they'll turn a question about the Supreme Court into a question about litmus tests for abortion. And CNN has to be lighthearted, so they choose an implicitly sexist question to end the debate.

The real revolution here would be to completely do away with the filter. Tomorrow's issue forum on global warming is through a couple progressive organizations. It'll be webcast. The more of this the better. The traditional media is useless for something like this.

F- CNN

So CNN is taking to blaming the Democrats for not "properly vetting" Graeme Frost and his family. Um, if they had "vetted" them, they would see that the Frosts are a perfect example of a family that needs S-CHIP because of skyrocketing health costs and a catastrophic accident. This is the equivalent of "she was dressed provocatively and asking for it." What the hell is John Roberts (the idiot reporter, not the Chief Justice) talking about?

I actually thought that the media was figuring this one out, that the conservative movement (not just "bloggers") crossed way over the line on this one. Apparently not.

Would it make any difference if Mitch McConnell's staff was behind the smear? Apparently not, since that was known before CNN aired their "story."

Manley cited an e-mail sent to reporters by a Senate Republican leadership aide, summing up recent blog traffic about the boy’s family. A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., declined to comment on Manley’s charge that GOP aides were complicit in spreading disparaging information about Frosts.

I know, CNN could devote a resource or two to tracking down this angle. They could maybe investigate if the Senate Minority Leader took part in a campaign to hunt down a 12 year-old boy. That would be "journalism" instead of pontificating from an air-conditioned studio.

Fuckers.

UPDATE: Malkin loses it. She can't take the fact that she has an archive, and that people found out that she couldn't find affordable health insurance in Maryland 3 years ago (the Frosts are also from Maryland). She's also mad that anyone would ask to debate her about SCHIP, because that would "distract from the issue." Debating the issue would distract from the issue. Fascinatin'! She is a pathetic creature.

The Lobbyist/Media Complex

I had a head-shaking moment while having the unfortunate experience of watching CNN a few minutes ago. Ed Henry did an update on his "exclusive" report (which consists of him reading IraqSlogger scoops) about Iyad Allawi's hiring of a GOP lobbying firm to promote the overthrow of the Iraqi government and his installation as Prime Minister (OK, Henry didn't completely put it that way, but that's essentially what's going on). Blitzer and Henry then let slip what that lobbying firm is doing with all that money, and how it's working.

Henry mentioned that Ambassador Robert Blackwill, an envoy to Iraq for the President, was running the Allawi account, yet still believed the Administration tripe that they have nothing to do with this lobbying effort. Henry even called Blackwill's efforts "working against the President." Really? Where's the evidence for that? Because White House spokesmen say so?

But here was the revelation. Henry said:

Now, what are these lobbyists doing for three hundred thousand bucks? So far they're sending out emails to lawmakers on Capitol Hill, their staff, some people in the media, that are essentially just clips that have already been out there in newspapers like the New York Times, attacking Nouri al-Maliki, saying that he hasn't stepped up, things that have already been in the public domain. Not bad work if you can get it, $300,000 to be sending out those media clips. They'll obviously be doing some other lobbying, but not bad work, Wolf.

And then Blitzer added:

He had an op-ed in the Washington Post over the weekend, which I read in the actual hard copy of the Washington Post, but then a day later, I got the email from a Dr. Iyad Allawi, and I had no idea where that was coming from, but you've cleared it up for me.

Later on, Blitzer announced that Allawi would be appearing on this weekend's CNN Late Edition.

Here we have the entire lobbyist-media complex that infects Washington groupthink like a horrible disease laid out for all to see. Interest groups pay lobbyists to get attention to their cause. Lobbyists pay media organizations to plant stories or print op-eds. Then they highlight these stories to the more lazy broadcast media, who chases the story like an errant soccer ball. It's all a well-known practice to those in Washington, but not to the vast majority of those media consumers. They actually think the stories with the most importance rise to the top, not the stories with the most money behind them. There is no reason for someone like Iyad Allawi, who's already failed miserably in his post as Prime Minister, should get any coverage from the traditional media.

In this case, the lobbying is on a major issue, and is designed to change both public opinion and the opinions of lawmakers. It should be no surprise that the lobbyists immediately take to planting articles and hectoring the media as the initial part of their strategy. I think there needs to be some walkback here. How was the Washington Post editorial board persuaded to print that editorial by Allawi in the first place? Did money change hands? What role did this lobbying group play in stories about the Maliki government's troubles in the first place? Where is the information for these stories coming from? Is Phillip Zelikow, who is still seen as an objective Expert on Iraq in media interviews, but who is also being paid by Allawi to degrade Maliki's stature, helping distribute anti-Maliki information to media outlets?

Glenn Greenwald asked a lot of these questions today, directly, to the GOP lobbying firm, BG&R:

I have placed several calls to BG&R today as well, and they claim that nobody responsible for answering press inquiries is available and they do not return messages. For any intrepid journalists who can obtain information from them, among the key questions are:

(1) Does Zelikow, as indicated by Chairman (Rep. Vic) Snyder, have a formal consulting relationship with the Bush administration itself to shape Iraq policy?;

(2) Did Zelikow disclose to ABC News that his firm was being paid by Allawi before agreeing to be interviewed about Iraq's future, in which he insinuated that the Bush administration was working to oust Maliki?

(3) Did BG&R have any role to play in having Fred Hiatt publish Allawi's Op-Ed two weeks ago, proclaiming Maliki to be the cause of Iraq's problems?

With the revelations by CNN, it's important that we keep asking these questions and get some real answers. Right now, a blog is driving this story for the simple reason that this reveals the traditional media to be totally ethically compromised when reporting on events like Iraq. The blogs need to keep doing the driving so we can understand what's happening here.

A Thousand Words On the Media

This is maybe as embarrassing as it gets for cable television. They send a reporter to Greensburg, Kansas to track down what's happening "on the ground" in the aftermath of the vicious tornado that wiped out the town, and... he ends up reading news out of the newspaper. On TV.

They did this on the local news in 1957. This is 50 years later.

And actually, I'm glad there's a visual confirmation, because this is all most cable news producers do before they feed words into the mouths of their anchors anyway. CNN was probably too cheap to send a producer out there for this empty suit, so he had to read the paper. On the air.

Unlimited resources, the full weight of corporate synergy behind them, and this is what CNN delivers and calls it news. Part of it is tight budgets, but most of it is laziness. And a complete atrophying of the principles of newsgathering. A couple reporters on the teevee understand that, you know, talking to a couple people and figuring out the real story might make a more compelling angle than READING THE WICHITA EAGLE LIVE. Not this guy.

I don't think there's any more iconic an image about what is wrong with our media than this one.

CNN: the most trusted name in reading other people's news.

...one could counter-intuit this and say "Isn't this what bloggers do?" The answer, of course, is "No," and any blogger who does this consistently is actually liable under plagiarism laws. The other thing is that 99.9% of all bloggers aren't paid to produce the news. This guy, the guy who's reading the newspaper on the air, is.

Laughing At Darth Cheney

Not even Joe Klein bothers to take this guy seriously anymore. He does a grade-A snarky translation of what Cheney said in his little press availability today and what he meant.

The preferred response, really the only response to Dick Cheney, to anything he says, should not be offense or anger but laughter. He is a comical figure who's on an unbroken "I'm wrong and I'm lying" streak for six years. Anyone who takes him seriously ought to get real. Nobody in the country listens to a word he says.

CNN might want to heed that before running headlines that say "Cheney attacks defeatist Dem plan." Thanks for the editorial comment there, most trusted name in news.