Richard Belzer is one very interesting dude.
When the current Iraq mess started, Bush has a number of media "embedded" with the troops on the ground. It was the ultimate step to control the media, and to refine and narrow the message to only the points that the US adminstration thought valid. The initial view of this was Shock and Awe, followed by an almost impossible direct run the the captial with little or no reported opposition.
In the last 10 years or so, the media has more and more become a direct tool of the government in power. Less and less of the "news" you see each day is actually a story written by the reporter, and instead is basically a retelling of the press notes given directly by the governement of the day. Reporters are becoming more and more lazy as hard news dies a quiet death.
The current deal is managing news cycles. It starts on Sunday with the Meet the Press style stories where whatever the story of the week will be is declared by the whitehouse or people on it's side, and the media then takes the quotes from those shows and uses it in the Monday news casts, which prompts the replies on the Tuesday newscast, followed by the whitehouse reaction (denial, support, or misdirection) on Wednesday. That leaves only 2 days of real news (thursday friday) before that week's cycle is complete. After that, set up your next target item and do the Sunday shows again. You can judge the importance of the item by the level of people who appears on those news shows.
The media is lead to the story, and told not only how to drink, but when to drink and how to report the flavor.
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artm...ew.cgi/37/9592
There is just way too much of this spoon fed pablum getting jammed down people's throats, and they are enjoying the bland flavorless crap.
Alex