Beating the hell out of WaPo

I'm looking for journalism that's a few steps up from mere transcription of official remarks. The Washington Post seems to be having a lot of trouble with that lately.

I once was confident the Post would survive the current vicious shakeout. Now I'm not so sure. With

• this proffer by Katharine Weymouth of Establishment access,
  
• this perennial blindness from Howard Kurtz
• in defense of this misleading tantrum of spite from Dana Milbank,
  
• and this ideological purge of Dan Froomkin,

the Post is a hollow shell of its former self - and you don't even have to consider the neocon dominance that makes its editorial and op-ed pages irrelevant in the real world.

Here's one more small example in the death of a thousand cuts.

This CNN report on the Air France Airbus 330 crash over the South Atlantic is far clearer about what we know and what we don't know than this reprinted Washington Post story. The Post story, which is supposed to be straight news, is more concerned about reassurance than facts:

[T]he 216 passengers and 16 crew on AF447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris were probably unaware during their final minutes that they were speeding from 35,000 feet toward the deadly crash.

Even if the investigator implied this, which I doubt, it's bullshit. You can't fall that far without noticing that something is very wrong. I can't understand how any writer could fail to know this. He's a foreign correspondent, so he's been on a plane before. Surely he's noticed the tremendously more subtle but still plain-as-day moment when a plane starts its controlled descent.

The CNN story, although labelled an analysis, is factual and evinces the writer's prior knowledge:

Not only did the passengers have no reason to expect to ditch, but with the aircraft out of control it may have been impossible for them to reach them due to high G-forces.

What neither of them reports, presumably because the facts are still unknown or unproven, is what trajectory the aircraft took to its ditching point and whether it had any forward airspeed.

The one scenario I'm aware of that is consistent with what little we know is an uncontrollable flat spin to a pancake crash. My reasoning:

• Landing belly down means the plane was not ballistic.
• Vertical crushing means vertical speed dominated over forward speed.

Yeah, it's not much, and I don't know much about this subject, which is why I'd like to hear more from Kieran Daly. The Post? How is it relevant?

Nothing will change in wingnut media

The floggings will continue until ... the wingnuts are back in control. Their hate-filled media soldiers (and that is the role they play) will from Nov. 5 set out to destroy the government of Barack Obama.

We Democrats and liberals cannot stand idly by for the eleven weeks between Election Day and Inauguration Day while the frothing right wing sets their teeth into Obama and the Democrats. We must continue our attack on the failed Bushists and show the way to a better life for Americans.

(h/t Atrios)

Tucker Bounds, unrepentant liar

Tucky Bounds is in love with his $42,000 lie on behalf of John McCain. So in love that he repeats it in all sorts of contexts, including accusing Joe Biden of an "outright lie." If you're going to be a Republican spokesman, you need the satanic ability out of "The Exorcist" to induce head-swivelling like this. Imputing your sins to everyone else is their standard method of making me projectile vomit.

The truth, which big media mostly refuses to tell us, is here (in the economy tab), reported for children, who actually need facts, unlike adults, whom we allow to make up their own out of their impressions. Here's the Washington Post's table:

Change in Yearly Taxes
1) 0 to $18,981	-$21	-$567
2) $18,982 to $37,595	-$118	-$892
3) $37,596 to $66,354	-$325	-$1,118
4) $66,355 to $111,645	-$994	-$1,264
5) $111,646 to $2.87 million plus	-$6,498	+$3,017
$111,646 to $160,972	-$2,584	-$2,135
$160,973 to $226,918	-$4,437	-$2,796
$226,919 to $603,402	-$8,159	+$121
$603,403 to $2.87 million	-$48,862	+$93,709
More than $2.87 million	-$290,708	+$542,882

Yeah, that's Obama's tax plan on the right. Hmm, which one helps the middle class?

(h/t MediaMatters, via Atrios)

Even the liberal media

More evidence that the media does indeed host political bias, though not of course the bias that conservatives raise to explain any story they don't like. If you need more, here it is.

(h/t Atrios)

Lies, damned lies, and media

If you read one thing today, read this pwning of the media's willingness to add John McCain's dishonest ads to the received narrative.

[T]he political media simply don't care about falsehoods and lies -- at least when they are coming from John McCain and his campaign. Sure, they'll (sometimes) note the falsehoods, as detailed above. But they don't treat the falsehoods as though they are important. They don't devote articles and television segments to McCain's growing credibility problem or to detailing the growing pattern of bogus claims. Instead, they debunk the details of McCain's claim, then proceed to accept the underlying premise and devote their segments and articles to that.

The lies that the media eagerly repeats on behalf of Republicans are the only reason this election is not already decided. But then, they tipped the balance in both 2000 and 2004, so this should not be a surprise.

Put another way: If you're interested in learning what's true, talking head shows on TV are worse than worthless.

(h/t Atrios)

Sadly untested

John McCain's lack of command experience is soooo sad.

No matter how much the McCain surrogates may mewl and wail about Obama surrogate Wesley Clark's comments, it is an objectively unassailable fact that McCain has no war-time (corrected) command experience. Courage and military service, sure, but not in a command role.

It's interesting to note the McCain campaign's response is to pretend that Clark disrespected McCain's courage and service and to use that pretense to attack. The obvious on-point rejoinder that Obama has no military command experience either leaves the two candidates on par, and the McCain camp can't surrender their perceived advantage even though the fact is that McCain was what business these days calls an individual contributor.

Update (7/4): The definitive account from Media Matters of this affair's complete, abject ridiculousness.