Dday has a scathing commentary at Hullabaloo, including this bit from Robert Farley:
So, I'm trying to find out something about what's going on in Iran, and on CNN I can watch a rerun of Larry King interviewing several gentlemen without shirtsleeves who apparently assemble choppers. On Fox Mike Huckabee is trying to explain why Jesus hates credit card relief. MSNBC is rerunning something about a prison in New Mexico. CNBC is evaluating whether college students should be able to afford Chanel tote bags.
Sullivan also points out a few instances of total media fail on this.
Regular readers will have a good idea at this point of my opinion of the MSM in terms of providing actual information. This only renders it in stark tones: total failure to cover one of the most significant news stories happening right now. And most of what coverage there is seems to be doing what the media has learned to do best: acting as stenographers for those in power. This says a lot:
Sadly, the situation in Iran is not one I'm prepared to comment on -- I just don't have the information on which to base anything intelligent (and, if I rely on TV news, I never will have). I will say, though, that this looks worse than 1979. It's already nasty. It's going to get really, really bad.
I can, however, comment on the media coverage, which seems to be lacking. I've had my own run-ins with the slack-jawed complacency of the press, including an instance in which a reporter wanted to talk to me about comments I had left on a story she had done. I simply pointed out that everything I had to say I had said in the comments, that she gave her subject a free pass on some very substantive issues, that she didn't know enough about the issues even to have done the story, and she didn't even pick up on the comments by people she had quoted in opposition. She decided she didn't want to talk to me after all.
That's the free press in the U.S.
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