On the MSM

Bill Clinton recently suggested that young voters are easily fooled into voting for Barack Obama. On Digg, one user left a comment that I thought was fantastic:

Bill Clinton has it exactly backwards: Hillary is stronger with older voters because these voters are more likely to get their news mostly from the MSM, while younger voters rely more on the Web. On the Web, Hillary's spin gets shot to smithereens in seconds, whereas it has a much longer halflife on the MSM. The MSM is far more manageable by candidates than the Web is. The Web EMPOWERS its readers to get answers to their questions; they don't need to settle for and second-guess the narrow, cautiously worded narratives that the MSM puts out. For this reason, the MSM not only promotes ignorance, it also promotes self-mistrust in one's understanding of the political landscape (because consciously or not one is aware of the fact that the MSM is not being 100% level in its reporting).

Getting political information from the MSM is a terrible idea. This isn't because I believe big corporations are pulling the strings behind the scenes, or that its pure and deliberate propaganda. No...getting info from the MSM is a bad idea because the discourse is so superficial. The "debates" that they have on most of these programs are so inane that they barely scratch the surface of what really matters in an issue. Want proof? Watch CNN, and then watch CNN-International. It is undeniable: CNN purposefully dumbs down their content for American audiences.