Fake News? - Naw, Couldn't Be!

Those with sufficient savvy to explore a variety of media these days know that virtually all our major US newspapers now are fundamentally quite conservative. Most are actually owned by a very small number of quite-conservative ideologically-minded non-souls. Some papers have the courage - more likely an odd blend of chutzpah and whackiness - to turn an occasional editorial over to a sharp-tongued Texan like Molly Ivins or a wild firebrand Economics professor like Paul Krugman, but if you're paying attention you know how the deck is stacked. Outside of limited-audience papers, in the United Snakes of America our press is pretty well locked-down to an unofficial but very rigid policy of "don't bite the mandate that feeds you." Unless your pseudonym is Gannon and you are willing to turn homosexual tricks, even access to the White House press room is likely to be dicey. The New York Times and Washington Post, two papers repeatedly tagged by the right wing talk show spawn as liberal bastions, barely qualify as journalistic outlets these days using the standards of a time when reporting was free-wheeling and iconoclastic and actually involved investigation and independent thinking. (Of course these papers are paragons of reporting compared to the talk shows or Fox Snooze, but it would be a sad day if we were reduced to settling for those sorry self-flagellating venues as a point of comparison.)

So I think it says something when the Seattle Times, the long-acknowledged conservative establishment newspaper in town, features the (lower) front-page headline "In Bush's agencies, P.R. blurs into news", with subhead in print version - I kid you not - "FAKE NEWS." Any of you with sufficient detective skills to have actually tracked down these words on an obscure blog are doubtless well aware of a good deal of the backstory here. (Extra points for double-clicking "Comments" at end of column and identifying yourself.) The story briefly touches on the multitude of news-manipulation schemes on which this nefarious bunch of non-representative anti-democracy non-elected ideologues are spending your tax dollars. And, to give credit, what do you know - the article is from the New York Times. Whether in the self-lashing category or not, who can say. But mainstream media are so far behind the pace in terms of performing actual critical review of the doings of government these days that kudos for baby steps seem appropriate. Thank you Times and Times again.

And if you are able to work up at least some serious "harrummph" over this (and if not, why in hell are you here - reading this, first off, but even more so, taking up space on the planet?), the Stop Fake News site might also be of interest.