An interesting article about why the media protects Bush from looking like the idiot he really appears to be if you hear him speak:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0404290089apr29,1,4516177.column?coll=chi-news-col (requires registration)

Part of the argument is that the job of the press is to relate meaning rather than what was actually said. I completely disagree with this. At it’s core, pure “reporting” press is supposed to be unbiased. How can you expect to be unbiased when you’re trying to infer meaning from something? Everyone is going to take their own personal spin on it and you can’t then look back and say “Look, what he actually said was ___”

In this particular case I think the actions of the press definitely help Bush. No one wants to have the leader of a country look like a blathering idiot, but I don’t think that’s something that should be hidden either. As a voting citizen wouldn’t you want to know if your leader can’t pronounce basic words? You’re then free to infer whatever you’d like, but that’s an important data point in any case.

While we’re on the topic of the media, this is a very scary article:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0422-09.htm

So, even though there is ample evidence to the contrary, the majority of the US population still believes that there are ties between Saddam and al-Qaeda and that Saddam had WMDs. Now, I wasn’t initially willing to fault the media for this, but then my thought was “Ok, this has been reported a lot in the media that I watch, but what about the rest?” ie: I’m sure FOX news has their own spin on it. Reminds me of this from a while back.