This is vintage Froomkin. You must read:
Both Colbert and Stewart have risen to superstar status largely by calling (how can I put it here?) baloney on the Bush administration -- and on the press corps that transmits said baloney without the appropriate skepticism or irony.This is painfully true. The press regurgitates whatever the Bush White House feeds them. There is no analysis, no perspective, no determination of whether it's reality based. That's what the White House expects from the traditional media -- and unfortunately, it's what they get. The media is clinging to some past ideal of what their job is. The Bush team has changed the rules. Lying is standard operating procedure. Well, lying and threatening to prosecute reporters as spies.
Their very subversive message, at its core: That this Bush guy is basically a joke. And that the mainstream press is a joke, because it takes Bush at his word. ....
The way I see it, the Washington press corps is still appropriately embarrassed that they screwed up in the run-up to war. Now, as Bush's approval ratings fester, they are getting bolder in challenging the official White House line on any number of issues. They're justifiably proud of a handful of great investigative pieces.
But they still haven't addressed the central issue Colbert was raising: Bush's credibility. As it happens, the public is way ahead of them on this one: For more than a year, the polls have consistently been showing that a majority of Americans don't find Bush honest and trustworthy.
