“[L]et’s be honest, you all, the media, tend to cover ‘X said this, Y said this,’ but some of you, but not everyone, does an investigation about whether what X said is actually true.” – White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs

Damn straight. Take, for example, this “death panel” nonsense. A couple of wingnuts (including Sarah Palin and Pat Buchanan) says Obama’s health plan includes death panels to decide who gets care and who doesn’t. Rather than reporting that Obama’s health plan has no such provision whatsoever, the media merely report that the Democrats say there’s no such provision.

If I had gone on national television last year and said that Dick Cheney eats babies, one would expect the media to say “Dick Cheney obviously does not eat babies” rather than calling the Office of the Vice President for comment. Do you see the difference?

They turn a simple matter of true/false into he-said/she-said. This is how journalism suffers in the name of “balance.” It happens all the time and it’s absolutely infuriating.