06.22.06
Where are mainstream reporters?
And what do they do? Beyond, of course, reporting who said what. I mentioned earlier that they don't ask obvious questions. Nor do they do any obvious fact checking.
Here's a recent example: Tony Snow:
SNOW: "The president understands people's impatience — not impatience but how a war can wear on a nation. He understands that. If somebody had taken a poll in the Battle of the Bulge, I dare say people would have said, wow, my goodness, what are we doing here?
But you cannot conduct a war based on polls. And you can't conduct this kind of activity. What you have to do — and the president's been clear about this — is take a look at the conditions on the ground. Let's think for a moment of the alternative.
If the United States pulls out — and what's been interesting is that most people realize that simply pulling out would be an absolute, unmitigated disaster, not merely for the people of Iraq but the larger war on terror."
The obvious thing, of course, is to do a bit of research and look at the polls at the time of the Battle of the Bulge. The mainstream press can't seem to understand this notion, but thank heavens for blogs: Josh Marshall does a bit of fact-checking and discovers that 70% of the American public supported the war at the time of the Battle of the Bulge, and that support didn't waver during the battle—indeed, support continued to increase. (The chart itself is quite interesting.)
Juan Cole also has a good post on the Snow comment.
But the point remains: why are mainstream reporters so absolutely and totally incapable of checking elementary facts? Why can't they ask the obvious questions? Why are they so quick to betray the public trust?
UPDATE: Yet another example of reporter incompetence.
