NP: Bulls vs. Clippers

Sort of a humongous piece in the Sunday New York Times on the phenomenon of government-produced news segments and how pervasive they've gotten.

While it addresses some of the possible root causes -- namely how TV news departments are typically trying to create more programming with less resources -- I think they're missing the broader point.

The absolute hallmark of the Karl Rove strategy, it seems to me, is to present dubious information as fact and leave it up to the audience to do the homework as to whether or not it's accurate. To be fair, that's politics, but there's something inherently creepy about the memes that Rove will plant that makes him stand out to me.

The strategy takes advantage of the fact that we're all overworked and overbusy, so we don't have the time to check things out. If you gift-wrap a really polished "news" story to a beleagured news manager, he or she may be more likely to miss the alleged label disclosing it's source as being the U.S. government. The article tries to pin this on third-generation sourcing where the true return address has been overwritten, but I think that's perhaps giving too much benefit of the doubt.

If you're really busy, and you're given a well-presented shortcut, you're going to take it, and not ask so many questions. Or the need to ask those questions will fade as you get busy with other things.

This is what bothers me so much about this practice. It preys upon the hectic lifestyle, upon the glut of things that, for better or worse, demand our attention on a daily basis. This is some of what the blogosphere aspires to cut through, but it's still an extra step for the average member of the average household to take in order to get past the veneer of deceit inherent in nearly all political proclamations. That's one of the main points that keeps blogs from being the system of checks and balances for the mainstream media that some would ascribe.