The Town Criers

Today's main stream media is comprised largely of scare mongers, fear merchants, hype artists, and mouthpieces pretending to be objective while flacking for the political left. The alleged man-caused global warming hysteria offers a great example of how supposed journalists took sides and abdicated what used to be their responsibility to investigate facts. Those covering climate change bought the line of those with vested interest who stood to profit immeasurably if carbon taxes and cap and trade became law without any skepticism that should be the hallmark of a journalistic professional. But the hype is not limited to a single subject, every story from seasonal to swine flu becomes the next impending cataclysm. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are exaggerated as if every day is the Battle of the Bulge or Iwo Jima, so that when calm reflection and deliberation are needed, the most odious defeatists are the focus of media attention (recall "the war is lost" Light-brain Harry Reid). There are of course, lamentably, US casualties, but we are not attending tea parties but actively engaged in combat on battlefronts, and despite Obama's insanely restrictive rules of engagement, we are winning. Local media is not exempt from the criticism directed at the national propagandists. Nashville reporters parrot the party line of their New York and Washington fellow travelers and even create a sense of panic by bellowing snow, even as they warned was coming last night, when thankfully at least where I travel around the city, there was none. At least grocery stores benefit from hyped weather events where if you call for frozen precip on a Nashville TV station, you create a run on milk and bread like the silver panic of 1893. Unfortunately, cooler heads can not prevail in a dearth (some might say a dinosaur media-imposed vacuum of information), which is why I thank God everyday for talk radio and the Internet.