How it works

I don't expect hagiography from straight news biographies of new Senators. I expect some attempt to measure the person fairly, and that has to include negatives. No one is an angel, not even Al Franken (as if).

Read this Franken bio on CNN, though, and you'll see that it is composed of two streams:

• Straight narrative
• and Republican talking points, shoehorned into the story by a stenographer
  

The Republicans' spot attacking Franken's comedy career? No rebuttal, not even an evaluation of its claims. Republican attacks over the "Porn-O-Rama" satire? No rebuttal, no context, no evaluation. Hey, it was in Playboy, it must be bad.

Finally, there's a Republican quote that needles Franken as the left's answer to Rush Limbaugh, as if Franken's opposition to Limbaugh necessitated symmetrical extremism. Nope, no response from a liberal. No context. Nothing.

This is how the big media thrust Republican propaganda.

The truth is this: The big media have accepted conservatives' bullshit working of the refs so that verifiable facts have to be "balanced" with Republican screeds. That explains a lot about conservative detachment from reality, but it's perilous for the country.