This is balance?t

[Southern Patriot]

Something has been driving me crazy lately. I call it "faux balance" on media panels.

Today I saw a show about debates on CSPAN. There was a moderator, a guy named Last from the Weekly Standard Online, and a average garden-variety newspaper reporter.

Of course, the Weekly Standard guy is spinning so hard that he could be a human perpetual motion machine. The newspaper reporter, who's job is to be non-partisan, "balanced" and non-committal says plays it straight down the middle. "On the one hand but on the other hand...etc."

I want to scream at the moderator, "Hey, you idiot! This is like giving Bonnie and Clyde the keys to the bank guarded by a blind guard."

Another case, Saturday NPR featured a moderator, a USAToday political reporter, a WashPo political reporer and... drum roll... Tony Blankley, chief propagandist for the Rupert Murdoch Washington Times.

Blankley slickly pretends, most of the time, to be a fair-minded journalist who's just speaking frankly. Now and then, though, he'll slip in a bald, RNC propaganda point dressed up a little. The other two reporters called him down on outrageous mischaracterization of what Kerry said in the debate. Blanckly, of course, treated it as minor disagreement between colleagues when basically they were saying "Hey, quit LYING, Tony."

As Jon Stewart said in a "Fresh Air" interview Sunday, the media should be a referee more than a simple "on-the-one-hand then on-the-other-hand" approach.

[libbygurl]

1. The Meeedjuh! (per Randi Rhodes) could learn lots from Jon Stewart-superb

...interview with him on Fresh Air. The man's brilliant. Thank goodness he's on the air doing what he does!