"Not reportable, are you kidding me?"

I found a couple good hoolies on the US press' moribund performance on reporting about the Downing Street Memos. It quotes Sunday Times reporter Michael Smith on the lack of US press coverage:

"It is one thing for the New York Times or The Washington Post to say that we were being told that the intelligence was being fixed by sources inside the CIA or Pentagon or the NSC and quite another to have documentary confirmation in the form of the minutes of a key meeting with the Prime Minister's office. Think of it this way, all the key players were there. This was the equivalent of an NSC [National Security Council] meeting, with the President, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, George Tenet, and Tommy Franks all there. They say the evidence against Saddam Hussein is thin, the Brits think regime change is illegal under international law so we are going to have to go to the U.N. to get an ultimatum, not as a way of averting war but as an excuse to make the war legal, and oh by the way we aren't preparing for what happens after and no-one has the faintest idea what Iraq will be like after a war. Not reportable, are you kidding me?"

It's not that I look to the mainstream press here for hard news, but it's still fun to rake on it. I'm not sure who is to blame for the sorry state of our media. To be sure, the media themselves have much of the blame at their doorstep. No doubt profit motive is part of it as well as the oft-mentioned desire not to lose inside access to government. I find the latter to be funny because it's not like the access of CNN reporters is proving to be fruitful. What are they afraid of losing? All they do nowadays is relay press releases to the public. You don't need any sort of special access or privileges to repeat talking point memos or press releases.

Regarding the former, perhaps it is only a proximate cause. Maybe it is we the public who are the ultimate cause. After all, we consume their crap with little protest. There is no law saying that you cannot indulge yourself with the minutae of the Michael Jackson trial and ignore what's happening in Iraq or the workings of our government. If we want fluff on our news, then that's what we'll get. If we get fluff on our news, say nothing, and keep watching/reading, then it will stay that way.

Hey! Bill Moyers is now being interviewed on The Al Franken Show on the Sundance Channel. I have to admit that I've really changed the way I get my news lately. In the morning I watch The Al Franken Show on Sundance. When I get home from work, I'll listen to a podcast of Democracy Now!. In between, I'll check out some blogs and news aggregators as well as some local news outlets such as the webpages of Madison TV stations and newspapers. There are days when I can just spend hours and hours surfing the Net reading news and it can become information overload. Ergo I've tried to find a core set of sources for news and opinion and stick to them. Oh, and on Friday nights I try to catch (or TiVO) NOW on PBS, even though Bill Moyers isn't there any longer. It's one of the only place on television to find useful news on the middle and working classes. It's one of the only places on TV where you can see an interview with a philosopher and a political scientist. It's not that rich people, politicians, and the leaders of our government and industries don't have important things to say. They do and we should hear them, but it gets old hearing from them and only them. "Alternative" media not only gives voice to non-elites but women and non-whites.

While I could probably blather on, I must get ready for work.