2005 Media Follies!

As one would expect in a year when one of the underreported stories was our government's covert propaganda campaigns, there's plenty to unravel: stories that should never have been stories, stories whose reporting largely missed the point, and stories barely told at all in mainstream US media.

The good news is that, more than ever, mainstream media is no longer the last word in journalism. Foreign media, now universally available in English on the Internet, often tells a completely different (and usually more accurate) story than what we see, read, and hear here. So-called alternative media--which has been way ahead of the mainstream media on any number of issues--has repeatedly shown its relevance, to the point where the Internet is rapidly becoming the preferred news source for many Americans.

But it's the mainstream that still has the largest audiences, and so it is the stories that do and don't appear there that require our attention. Here's our list, which is surely incomplete.

The Year's Most Overhyped Stories:

The fate of Terri Schiavo. Somehow, the fate of a woman who hadn't done much more than twitch in nearly two decades, and who had clearly stated that she never wanted to be kept alive in such conditions, became a crude political football for pandering Presidents and members of Congress. They should be ashamed--as should the media outlets that milked this non-story for weeks.

Intelligent Design [sic].

The "War on Christmas." What do all three of these items have in common? They were all introduced and hammered into self-serving "controversies" by the right-wing echo chamber at times when they really wanted to make sure the public wasn't paying attention to congressional or White House scandals, a disastrous war, or the death of a major American city.

Everything's Going Splendidly in Iraq. From the myth early in the year that Bush's vision for democracy was spreading like wildfire throughout the Middle East, to the notion that Iraqi troops were trained en masse and ready to fight, to entirely mythical "progress" in Iraq's economy and reconstruction, to the prediction, dutifully trotted out during three separate elections, that each such election marked a major turning point and a crippling blow for the insurgency, to an insurgency in its "death throes," it was hard to take seriously anything the White House said about Iraq. Yet, remarkably, large segments of US media did just that.

Michael Jackson's Trial.

Martha Stewart's Comeback.

Julia Roberts' Baby. OK, OK, any of the beautiful people.

Howard Dean. Now the Democratic National Committee head, Howard still shoots off his mouth (often accurately), and Republicans still get themselves all in a knot whenever he does. Get over it. He's a glorified party fundraiser now, not a public official. What he says about public policy does not matter.

Pat Robertson. He wants Hugo Chavez dead. He threatens Dover, Pennsylvania on behalf of a God who apparently can't speak for Himself. He thinks New Orleans' suffering is punishment for not meeting his warped idea of morality. WHO. CARES. The publicity just encourages him.

The Minutemen. A few hundred yahoos on the Mexican border, and a few dozen on the Canadian border, proves only that there are still unemployed racist idiots living in Orange County and its spiritual equivalents.

Plus sports, 14-Day-Accu--Pinpoint-Doppler-Radar-Insta-Weather, the usual.

The Underreported Stories:

George Bush is already a lame-duck president. There's usually a year or two grace period after the president is elected for the second time, when he can point to his second election victory as vindication for his policies and use it to get some important legislation passed. Bush has squandered his election victory. All the major initiatives he wanted to pass in Congress this year, from the privatization of Social Security to the permanent renewal of the USA Patriot Act provisions, have gone down in flames, even with a solid Republican majority in both houses. The most basic budget bills have failed to pass because Bush couldn't get a consensus within his own party. Meanwhile, members of his administration are leaking stories of Bush administration misdeeds every week. Three more years of this and the Republican Party may never recover.