Where Are the Real Journalists?
Our Readers Who Comment have strong opinions this morning about a question Howard Kurtz raises in his media column: why haven’t mainstream journalists been able to kill Sarah Palin’s “death panel” assertion, which I think continues to poison the health-care reform debate. On a slow August news day, this column has scored more comments than anything else on the site. Several readers call for journalists to be more direct, and call a lie a lie and a liar a liar. But as Kurtz notes, in the Palin case most media have done just that, although not quite so directly. The comments also raise valid (and sometimes conflicting) points and perceptions about news media: that we are overly careful about reporting both sides (Rush Limbaugh et al excepted); that we prefer minor but understandable controversies over more complex substantive ones; that Jon Stewart’s comedy points more directly to the truth than a balanced news report and, of course, that we are liberal (except for the Post’s unforgivabl
