Too many brushfires

It's maddening, the number of false or biased reports that are being fed to the public by the mass media; and the stories the public aren't told.

Nowhere is it reported that the British are furious at Bush's administration for "outing" their source of al-Qaida intelligence by issuing an alert, clearly based on the source's information. Americans aren't informed about the undemocratic selection of the national assembly in Iraq, aren't kept abreast of the increasing death toll of US soldiers. They're given no information about the billions of dollars--that's with a "b"--that are unaccounted for from the Iraq reconstruction funds, the latter story carried by Reuters, but nowhere televised on the major broadcast or cable media.

We're inundated with stories about celebrity trials, with "spin" stories about campaign smears, with the latest violence and weather problems.

The dumbing down of America? It may be in large part the fault of Americans themselves. It surely is the fault of the media, too. They've long blamed themselves for this, but have done nothing about it.