Who do you think poses a greater danger: Limbaugh, Hannity, etc. or...

"legit" reporters (Pre$$titutes) like Jodi Wilgoren, Tim Russert, Howard Fineman, Andrea Mitchell, Wolf Blitzer, and so on?

Answer: http://www.presstitutes.com/presstitutes/2005/07/frequently_aske.html

And speaking of Wilgoren:

http://www.presstitutes.com/presstitutes/2005/10/atrios_on_wilgo.html

Jodi Wilgoren earned top Pre$$titutional honors during Election '04. The Daily Howler chronicled her journalistic transgressions here.

Atrios, one of blogland's keenest media observers, blogs about Wilgoren's latest pearls of wisdom. Key quote: "Reporters have decided their job is to simply have no opinions on anything, or at least pretend to. They pretend to take themselves out of it entirely. I don't think they really have no opinions, but they nonetheless feel the need to do their jobs in such a way as to pretend this is the case. Of course, whenever there's beltway "conventional wisdom" on a subject they feel free to violate this even when that conventional wisdom is bollocks. Lovely."

While we're on the subject of Jodi Wilgoren, here's a fascinating example of how rightwing claims about liberal media bias are about as reasonable as rightwing claims about Bush's genius. Timeswatch.org is run by the Media Research Center, a rightwing media attack group.

TimesWatch maintained a Wilgoren watch page during the 2004 presidential campaign. It's a veritable treasure trove of twisted, facetious, tautological arguments. Here are a couple of examples (read the rest if you want a good laugh):

1. Bush's Main Rationale for War Has "Unraveled" - "Friday's front-page story by David Sanger and Jodi Wilgoren on the just-released Duelfer Report on Iraq discusses its impact on the campaign and puts Bush on the defensive: "Mr. Kerry, emboldened by the report's unraveling of the administration's main rationale for going to war, shot back with his sharpest indictment yet, telling reporters that Mr. Bush and his vice president 'may well be the last two people on the planet who won't face the truth about Iraq.'"

And this is rebutted how? By arguing that "Jonah Goldberg points out, Bush had many rationales for war, including spreading democracy in the Middle East."

So let's get this straight: Sanger and Wilgoren were wrong to say that Bush's "main" rationale for invading Iraq - WMD - was "unraveling" because some rightwing blowhard pointed out that Bush had a potpourri of rationales for war? This, dear readers, is what rightwingers characterize as "liberal" media bias.

2. Wilgoren Pitches in for Balanced Campaign Coverage - "Jodi Wilgoren makes up for her previous credulous characterization of a Kerry campaign event by noting Kerry supporters can pitch softballs to their candidate as well: "At the Philadelphia event, Mr. Kerry poked fun at the president, whose campaign has been accused of only inviting volunteers to events and vetting their questions, by asking the audience whether anyone had to sign a loyalty oath or had been fed questions. The crowd hissed, 'No!' but the steady stream of softballs that followed could have come from a pitching machine."

"The steady stream of softballs that followed could have come from a pitching machine" is classic anti-Kerry Wilgoren. So what's it doing on a site that purports to fact-check Wilgoren's liberal bias? That's for rightwing nuts to know and us to find out...

:evilgrin:

survival as a people and country.

Should the question really be, what poses a greater threat, hidden agenda or overt agenda?

Gasbag propagandists at the national level, such as Rushbag, Hambone Hannity, Savage, Coulter, Malkin, etc. make no claim to "objectivity" in their "reportage". The mainstream pundits at least tacitly purport to be objective. I wonder if someone like Russert allows his personal bias to influence his work. His treatment of Hillary Clinton, i.e., disdainful, barely concealed contempt, or his casual putdowns of Democratic politicians and congressional initiatives seem to suggest that he's not as objective as he'd like you to believe.

In this light I think it's the mainstream media types whose actual agenda is to stroke the party that's in power, thus preserving their own access, not to mention livelihoods, pose the greater of the two threats.

Propagandists wear many disguises.