While the examples Parry cites are dead-on accurate, I disagree with his conclusions. As much as the right wing loves to whine about the liberal press, it is absolutely, flat-out not true. While many journalists are more liberal, the giant corporations they work for are not. They and their editors know that. If they want to keep their jobs, they do as they're told. And they're told to echo the meme that's been assigned to them, and focus on the "cute" trivia because the audience it and it's good for ratings. The corporate masters have also gutted the newsrooms, severely limiting their ability to do in-depth investigative journalism. So reporters endlessly repeat the same stories everybody else is reporting on, using each other for sources. This is not new. In 2004, I was in Iowa the week of the caucuses as a Dean volunteer. Every "journalist" I talked to asked about Dean's "anger." Despite the fact that it is not true (A friend was on staff and thus spent more time with him than I did. She swears it's false.) it was the story they'd all been assigned, and they endlessly searched for ways to support it. His enthusiastic, and electronically edited, "Yeah" on caucus night was a godsend to them because it fit their story. Not because it was true. I was there. And you can take it from me that it was completely distorted. But, as Parry says, it doesn't matter. After 900 plays, Dean's candidacy was dead. And the tardy explanation of the media of what they'd done got much less attention than their doctored piece did. But killing Dean's candidacy was exactly what the corporations wanted. He'd already said he'd raise their taxes. He'd already said he believed in more media regulation. He was not popular with these guys. But George Bush was. He was their guy, and his guy Rove had a plan to defeat Kerry. But not Dean. Dean was a wild card and Rove wanted him wacked. So the media did his bidding in a classic case of one dirty hand washing the other. That week pretty much killed any illusions I had of journalistic integrity, because that wasn't the only example. It was just one of the more obvious ones. I saw one media figure interviewing another. Not the people involved in the election, but another reporter. I saw other lies repeated endlessly. When I approached a reporter about one, his response was "Ah well." Nobody was interested in using their own eyes and ears and reporting on what was actually happening. They were interested in having the same story everybody else had (kind of like having the same clothes as the popular kids in school ), and supporting the story they'd been assigned before they got there. Parry is also right that the false stories stick. The McCain campaign knows that too. They saw it done to Kerry and Dean, and to McCain himself. And they are and will use the same tactic, with the full cooperation of the corporate media.