Digby nails it

Once again Digby at Hullabaloo shows why I check his site every day. His take on the
"News " Media is spot on. Go read it. Below are some highlights.
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"Apparently, the mainstream press is so enveloped in the warm, cozy womb of the DC establishment that they either don't know what is going on around them or they've been willingly co-opted. I saw that same kind of wide-eyed, naive wonder on the face of Bob Woodward recently, when he realized that junkyard dog Patrick Fitzgerald wasn't actually a slavering liberal determined to expose all of his Republican sources going back to Deep Throat. It's in the defensive posture of Jim Brady as he recoiled in horror at unwashed liberal masses daring to criticize his ombudsman's glaring error. It's demonstrated by the fatuous guilelessness of the NY Times creating a "conservative beat" in the year 2005, as if they just discovered Rock and Roll or bell-bottoms. They are like sheltered children. They do not know when they are being played. Indeed, they don't even seem to know the game exists."
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"Today, prudent restraint has become cowed submission to every republican complaint and an overweaning desire to please them with narratives of Democratic fecklessness. The Washington Post hears that Dan Froomkin, White House critic, is disliked by Republicans. Writers themselves feel uncomfortable with (and jealous of) the free-wheeling, critical tone of his online White House column, an irreverent style that is common in modern online journalism (see: sister site Slate.) They solve the "problem" by hiring the rabidly partisan 24 year old son of a Bush administration official."
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"You can smell panic coming off the media in waves today. In 2006, there is nothing that screams "Middle America" (or perhaps the more accurate "Real America") than the phrase "military families." (Watch this video at Crooks and Liars of the modern Mencken, Jack Cafferty, having none of it and exposing Kurtz's analysis for the sophistry it is by pointing out the obvious: the news is getting worse because the war is getting worse.)"

Hullabaloo

The only thing I'd add to his divine diagnosis is that, I don't think that the Media elites are being taken for a ride. I think they are the ride. Katie, Matt, Tweetie Matthews, etal. are doing EXACTLY what they're paid to do. Provide cover.