"Struck deaf by ego and narcissism..."

My title for today is taken from a comment left after this article by Jeffrey Lord at The American Spectator. Very astute. Not so sure Old Media has been struck deaf, or if it's a classic example of "none so blind as he who will not see." If I have an agenda to be advanced at any opportunity, I ignore any differing opinion, view, or evidence. Old Media are Old Hands at that game...and Mr. Lord provides examples.

The article itself is fairly long, but well-written and certainly worth the few minutes of time it takes. In it, Mr. Lord writes a letter to Tom Brokaw, detailing instances of non-reporting in Old Media and Brokaw's condescending remarks about the New Media (Talk Radio and the Internet) on a recent Meet the Press episode, where he was joined by Thomas Friedman.

Part of his smarmy line: And my line to them is you have to vet information. You have to test it the same way you do when you buy an automobile or when you go and buy a new flat-screen television. You read the Consumer Reports, you have an idea of what it's worth and what the lasting value of it is. You have to do the same thing with information because there is so much disinformation out there that it's frightening, frankly, in a free society that depends on information to make informed decisions.

Pathetic. This would be one reason I don't watch network television anymore.

Friedman's 'quote of the day' is this gem: "... the Internet is "an open sewer of untreated, unfiltered information.""

Personally, I think they sound jealous: Since ACORN has received millions of federal tax dollars over the years, and has been connected to President Obama in terms of his rise to prominence in Illinois politics, not to mention election activities while he was running for president, one would think this a major news story. Not for the Old Media. As reported by Glenn Beck a full two days after the story broke on Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com, here's the record of reports on this story:

Fox News -- 19
CNN -- 3
MSNBC -- 0
ABC -- 0
CBS - 0
NBC -- 0
New York Times -- 1 (an AP story)
Washington Post -- 1 (an AP story)

One more excerpt before I go finish the dishes: In other words, across five decades of American journalistic history, the instinct of many Old Media institutions -- specifically including NBC and the New York Times -- has been to deliberately withhold the truth. To quite deliberately use their journalism skills and tools to misrepresent those whose politics they do not favor.

This is NOT the kind of reporting I thought I was learning in high school journalism. Makes me glad I didn't pursue it as a career - I really don't like being embarrassed because I've been lumped in with liars and cheats.