Truly Keeping Them Honest

Something that gives me a great deal of hope that we can turn the tide of our national media's watered down pablum political reporting back to something substantive is the yeoman's work that Glenn Greenwald does on his Salon blog and that Media Matters does as an organization.

Greenwald, a former lawyer, has a wicked mind and a sharp quill and is not afraid to use them. His eviscerations of those who tell only the Republican or "Beltway" side of the story and his coining of the term "bad stenographers" to describe the maggoty gruel that people like Joe Klein, Howard Kurtz and Thomas Friedman pass off as serious political discourse make his blog a thrice-daily read in my newsreader.

Media Matters is an organization widely hated in conservative circles. Whereas Glenn Greenwald takes on selected cases of the mainstream media's stenography of conservative talking points, Media Matters wades through the thoroughly dismal swamp of FOX News, CNN, MSNBC and our nation's papers of record to shine lights into dark corners that have gone largely unilluminated.

Work like this is particularly important because of the central role that cable news and national news play in setting the political agenda for most of America. As a country, we will continue to be crippled by ridiculous notions like "compassionate conservatism" and Orwellian ideas like government officials being "wrong on torture" until we demand better journalism from our journalists. Greenwald and Media Matters are two important pieces of that equation.

Finally, go have a sad laugh at this Tom Toles cartoon lampooning his own paper for their hackneyed repetition of the rumor that Barack Obama is, in fact, a Muslim.