[Gov'tMule]

Wag the Dog.

An applicable phrase.

I don't trust a thing I read nor half what I hear, but then again, I only listen to what I want.

Don't accept a thing I type, so:
Don't believe half of what you think.

[Dilly_sAm]

What it boils down to, though, is that the story is unverifiable, which is a sound reason for it not to get coverage.

Just like the whole Dan Rather/CBS Memogate thing, right?
Or how about their very spotty reporting on the crisis with the Italian reporter and special agent they shot and killed. That's damn verifiable, but it didn't get much playtime.
Come on, the American media will show any old unverifiable thing as long as it doesn't go against the government line. Granted, Memogate was undeniably anti-Bush, but as long as it didn't go after the "war" on terrorism.

[VioletlightHeron]

What it boils down to, though, is that the story is unverifiable, which is a sound reason for it not to get coverage.

Just like the whole Dan Rather/CBS Memogate thing, right?
Or how about their very spotty reporting on the crisis with the Italian reporter and special agent they shot and killed. That's damn verifiable, but it didn't get much playtime.
Come on, the American media will show any old unverifiable thing as long as it doesn't go against the government line. Granted, Memogate was undeniably anti-Bush, but as long as it didn't go after the "war" on terrorism.

Couple of problems I see with your statements about the Sgrena incident. One, it was heavily covered by the press and they did a pretty fair job of explaining both sides of the story. I have my doubts about Sgrena's claim that a "tank" took shots at their car. If that had happened, none of the passengers would have survived. It's starting to look like the Italian military didn't do a great job of informing the U.S. military about their rescue mission or their procedures for getting Sgrena to the airport once they paid the ransom to her captors.

The whole Rathergate memo thing was pretty heavily covered. Strangely, the mainstream media, in my opinion, didn't bother to test the memos authenticity before or after the blogosphere made mincemeat out of them. The whole Eason Jordan/CNN debacle was also not heavily reported in the mainstream media or the nightly news. They chose to make a huge deal about the Gannett thing. Makes you wonder exactly what the mainstream media cares about, telling the truth or covering their collective ass.

[skippy the wonder dog]

Now you have to decide which side of the coin you're arguing. Either the media should not run unverifiable stories, like this one, or they should give equal time to unverifiable stories from all sources. Which is it?

That American media is biased isn't the question. All media, by their nature, are biased. The bias begins with a judgment of what is news, and what is not; then a judgment of what news is most important; then what the story actually is, and which facts matter. This is inescapable. And some media further compound the bias by creating news, by commissioning polls, for example.

What people should expect is that the story will be carefully investigated. The fact that CBS screwed up Memogate doesn't mean that they should accept other bad evidence.