I know that most television media feel that they endeavor to report the news as fairly and evenly as they can, given the pressures of the 24 hour news cycle, the constraints of network formats and intense competition for ratings. The fact though is that few manage to earn the trust that the American people vest in them, few manage to even come close.

Don’t buy it? Try these examples of how the main stream news media fails the American people everyday.

“Just reporting what happened”

The media reports the event, elevating hyperbole and idiocy to news worthiness and promoting more of the same, the more outrageous the behavior the bigger the story.

“Just reporting what they said”

The media reports what someone says and spotlights the controversy it creates instead of making those guilty of lies, distortions and obfuscation the subject of correction and ridicule.

“The basics are…”

The media simplifies stories, dumbing them down to the point of inaccuracy, as though they are fulfilling a service by offering the cliff notes instead of the facts.

“We called them out”

The media corrects the bullshit once, and they are done, but that is not really enough is it? We need the media to be as persistent at correcting the lies as the purveyors of the crap are at shoveling it. The job could be painfully tedious but the American people deserve the full measure of effort in the defense of the truth.

“We tell both sides of the story”

The media needs to realize that “fair” is not the even apportionment of time between fact and some wild distortion, it is even handed reporting and fact based analysis to help the American people understand the truth in political discourse without making politics their life.

It is vitally important that the media understand that just because they deal with these issues and talking point everyday the vast majority of Americans don’t and the flippant dismissal of blatant bullshit because you’ve dispelled it before isn’t good enough.

It might be easy to dismiss these complaints as trivial or picky I assure you it is not.

A substantial portion of the electorate believe our President is: foreign, Muslim, socialist, fascist and actively trying to destroy the country. If the media had handled any of these ridiculous claims responsibly how could it be possible that so many people still believe demonstrably false claims? Laugh it off if you will, but when some people are buying ammunition at record rates, searching for signals of the end of times and crashing planes into IRS offices the strenuous defense of the truth is perhaps the highest calling for anyone who would call themselves journalist.

BTW – I am not including Fox News in what I describe as main stream media, Fox is clearly an advocacy group promoting a particular ideology, for them the accurate dissemination of fact is a distant concern.