See No Evil

Two blockbuster stories have emerged in the last few weeks:

1. Top White House officials, up to and including President Bush, approved and even directed the torture of suspects held in Guantanamo Bay and other War on Terror™ prisons. This began years ago and puts the lie to endless Administration pronouncements that the torture scandals of Abu Ghraib and other locations were caused by "bad apples" who ignored orders.
2. The White House, coordinating with the Pentagon, the State Department and the Justice Department, secretly worked with retired military officers to ensure that when they went on TV as "military analysts," they would give the officially approved version of events in Iraq. The result was not independent analysis at all, but rather a deliberate propaganda program to "spin" the Iraq War and prevent the American people from seeing the truth.

And here is the avalanche of outrage from the media:

(crickets)

In fact, pretty much the only person in the press to even try to make a stink over the torture issue is Helen Thomas, who put press secretary Dana Perino on the spot over it last week and elicited the utterly absurd statement that "torture has not occurred."

Of course, given the efforts the White House has put into defining torture so narrowly to as to exclude almost everything, such a statement is meaningless.

The propaganda story has been similarly ignored ever since the New York Times broke it a week ago. Only PBS has done anything with it, and they somewhat dryly noted that "we invited Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC and NBC to participate, but they declined our offer or did not respond."

Now it just so happens that both stories reflect badly on the media as a whole, highlighting their willingness to swallow the official White House line without question. For years, the mainstream media, particularly the various TV networks and big newspaper chains, have been less and less willing to challenge those in power. Preferring to keep their "access" rather than do their jobs, they let the whoppers go unchallenged, the scandals remain hidden, and generally turn themselves into a bunch of bootlicking stenographers.

And they wonder why readership is falling and their ratings are down.