Thursday, February 09, 2006

Missing the boat

It's a new euphemism for bias. Howard Kurtz reports that "Much of the MSM missed the boat." when they ignored or buried the rudeness of Jimmy Carter and the race industry leaders at the Coretta Scott King funeral.

This, of course, was not bias on their part. It was, ah, because, "reporters come to a set-piece event like this with the lead in their heads and even if the place is set on fire, they don't deviate from their path."

If this was a single event in which the print media ignored the obvious because it was inconvenient to their presentations, it would deserve the Kurtz mild rebuke. As it is, the stories are the first version of history that they intend to write despite reality. Increasingly readers are looking to blogs for accuracy and completeness.

And where does that leave newspapers except as press releases from loathed spin machines?

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