Reply #20: I saw Frontline recently, "The Dark Side"

[Danascot]

on how Cheney and Co got us into Iraq. At one point an average citizen reacted, "I had no idea. Why didn't the media tell us this was going on."

He was one of many ordinary American who believed that the government and the media were basically telling the truth. Yes, I know all of us here at DU could have told him differently years ago, but with the charade now noisily falling apart there are a great many people like him who are finally coming to see that these two keystone institutions of our culture have failed them. One consequence is that they expressed themselves very clearly in the November election. They're never going to trust media in the same way they did before. They're going to shun the go along/get along "balanced" corporate media and start looking for new sources that are credible, the internet, blogs, people like Froomkin and Stewart and Colbert and Olbermann and Sy Hersh and Mollie Ivins who are willing to call bullshit when they see it.

The old media will learn, like the Republicans have started to learn, that When you don't act and speak with integrity, you sow the seeds of your own destruction.