restoring sanity rally

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert held what has been called the largest press criticism event in history over the weekend.  As Stewart declared, “The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected dangerous, flaming ant epidemic.”

In his Monday media column David Carr seems to cast doubt on the power of Stewart’s big target:  cable news, claiming its audience is relatively small in the big scheme of things.  But this model for pundit-based, conflict oriented echo-chamber news tends to corrupt the entire political conversation, yielding an effect larger than its actual audience would indicate.  Part of this corruption must also be regarded as the continuing links between the corporate parents of news organizations participating themselves in the flow of campaign funding–an example in the same Monday Times concerning a News Corp contribution to defeating a business tax in California, and then reporting negatively on the tax in a “War on Business” documentary on the Fox Business Network.