Who will smack down all the lies?

Over the past few decades, America's "mainstream media" has been hornswoggled by one big falsehood after another

By Gene Lyons
Salon.com

For most of two decades, Democrats have acted as if they actually believed what conservatives say about the allegedly liberal "mainstream" news media. Any day now, appropriately stringent and evenhanded news gathering and editorial standards will reappear as if by magic.

Reporters will no longer seek fame and fortune by feeding out of the hands of political operatives and impersonating fortunetellers on TV. They'll see themselves as public servants instead of media stars. Anonymous sources who peddle bogus information will be exposed. Fact will drive opinion rather than vice versa. Correspondents and commentators who traffic in falsehoods and imaginary conspiracies will be driven from the profession.

On that wondrous day, Americans will be offered reliable information rather than politicized infotainment and downright propaganda. Also, Clark Kent will be named editor of the Daily Planet. Flying pigs will colonize bald eagle nests along the Potomac. Fox News will be replaced by a channel peddling miracle weight loss pills and electronic gadgets for chasing off cockroaches.

In the real world, alas, things are trending the other way fast. With precious few exceptions, big-time journalism has literally become a subdivision of the entertainment industry. Cable TV networks in particular treat national politics as an ongoing melodrama whose protagonists -- Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Sarah Palin -- are basically celebrities, symbolic figures to be loved or hated by millions according to how they are caricatured. Reality retreats as fantasy advances.

(More here.)