The dominant trends in "journalism" in the mainstream corporate media have, over the last eight years, logically produced one of these 3 things:
- re-inforced but not changed the best and worst of media/jounalism tendencies.
2) improved the quality of reporting or options available to news "consumers"
- worsened the situation, making the echo chamber effects of shallow reductionism, inter-partisan analysis fronting as "fairness", and group-think consensus passing as "wisdom" more awesomely threatening to informed discourse in a democracy.
( Chris Matthews, David Gergen, if out there.... pick one of the above. If you are Joe Scarborough or Glen Beck, you already found this too complicated and quit.)
Lets test the theory.
George Bush: Year 2000. Candidate for President of the USA.
Barack Obama: Year 2008. Candidate for President of the USA.
The topic: PATRIOTISM as an element of FITNESS FOR PUBLIC OFFICE.
Follow below the fold...(or just surrender to the utter preposterousness of the topic in advance.)