The 4th estate is as cold as last week’s road kill. Journalism, as America’s watchdog of wrongdoing, has been
eroding, as Dick Cheney says, “Big Time” Gone are the glory days of reporting, in which was debated such
momentous issues as which direction the presidential member purportedly leaned.  (Remember when that was
such a HUGE topic for all the pundits? Not a “could there be terrorists be among us” story to be seen if you will recall).

Despite lacking evidence, or doing the smallest bit of investigation, the American media often repeats lies
that race on to being accepted as fact, faster than you can say, “Bush’s Afghanistan Oil Pipeline”.
The latest example of this is a false claim by FOX news, and other right wing sources, that there is well
documented evidence that former Enron CEO Ken Lay stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House
during the Clinton administration.

Apparently, for the right-wing hate crowd, "well-documented" means, "I heard Rush say it."

USA today says they got the story from the Chicago Tribune, the Moonie owned Washington Times,
Fred Barnes and Republican gangster Alex Castellanos, took it up as gospel.  It raced on from there.
So what?
Well, turns out that Kenny boy never was an overnight guest during the Clinton administration.
Lay did, however, stay at the White House when George Bush the elder was president.

Here is another interesting tidbit you never heard reported:
Bush had lunch with Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel, Judy Woodruff,
Wolf Blitzer, Brit Hume, Jim Lehrer, Tim Russert, Bob Schieffer, Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts
on the day of his State of the Union address. Maybe it was just a coincidence that they simply gushed over it.

Yeah, and Bush didn’t forget about WW II in his speech to Japan. (“For a century and a half now,
America and Japan have formed one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times”)
 
Let’s get one thing straight right now.  The media is not in the business of reporting or informing you and I.
Not anymore.  It is in the business of making money.  To heck with you and your need to be informed of
what business and the government are doing in our name.

The chairman of the FCC, Michael Powell, Colin’s son (Thanks Unca George!), has never met a media merger he
didn’t love.  He is ready to give media monopolies absolute control over all communications channels . .. including
the Internet. The big networks, including Fox, want to end a cap limiting them to the number of stations that equal
35 percent of the television-viewing audience, so they can own an unlimited number of stations, and force local
owners to sell to them for cheap.

The vision? A single company in one community owning the newspaper, several television stations, several
radio stations, the cable system, and the local phone company. Goodbye diversity of thought, and goodbye
democracy. Conservatives, would you want an all-liberal slant, all-the-time, media monopoly in YOUR city?
Liberals, would you want a right-wing dominating media, covering for corporate swindling, and
republican wrongdoing, all the while falsely claiming liberal bias?

Oh, yeah.  We already have that.