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Media Fails Country's Citizens

I yesterday posted an item on 85 year-old veteran journalist Helen Thomas - a thorn in the side of no less than 9 US Presidents she has "covered".

So, it is interesting that today AlterNet has an article today - on the failing of the US media - which starts as follows:

"For more than three decades, the U.S. news media has been living off -- or living down, depending on your perspective -- its Watergate-era reputation of helping to unseat a power-abusing president and exposing a raft of other political scandals.

But the U.S. media's debacle over Iraq -- failing to seriously question George W. Bush's case for invasion and often acting as pro-war cheerleaders as the casualty lists lengthened -- has dealt a death blow to that 30-year-old mythology. The bloody spectacle of Iraq has become the Waterloo of Washington's "Watergate press corps," its crushing defeat.

Even the nation's preeminent news outlets, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, were sucked into the fiasco, shattering the trust that many Americans had placed in their "free press" as a vital check and balance on executive power."

Yes, the press corp has lived off what happened during Watergate. Oz had no Watergate but just reflect on how poorly we are served by the media. When did you last see hard searching - let alone searing - questions posed to a politician? There are no end of topics which call for answers from Government leaders. State and Federal.

Read the complete AlterNet article here.

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