More Big Journo Wankery

The tabloid mentality now makes up like 99% of journalism. Times runs story on the Saint being a whore for lobbyists; they have to gratuitously wrap with irrelevant crap about his banging a lobbyist. The relevancy was what? And then when Keller defends the story, he fails to emphasize what the story was actually about.

And that is what passes for goos journalism. The rest is even worse. Just one recent example, via TPM:

CNN's politics page has a big feature story headlined "Fellow Legislator Saw Little 'Bold' About Obama" with a introspective, solemn pic of Obama. Then you read the story. And the colleague is a guy named Dan Cronin, a Republican.

Shouldn't they have spoken to one of the Republicans who now has positive things to say about Obama? Oh, wait ...

Late Update: Turns out Cronin is actually a member of McCain's Illinois leadership team. (Good catch by TPM Reader TK) At this point, this amounts to CNN being spoofed. Correction or some explanation is in order, guys.

Who cares that Obama has been a legislative mediocrity? he hasn't been anywhere long enough to do anything. What hasn't the MSM analyzed Hil or the Saint the same way? She's barely been in the Senate long enough to do much but Johnny Mac has: And what little he's arguably accomplished -- campaign reform -- he's crapped on, essentially disavowing it. (Okay, it always was pretty cosmetic; campaign reform is all or nothing and McCain-Finegold wasn't "all".)