Since I haven't posted in a few days, it seems like it's time to say something.

Last night, having slept through the Bush press conference (my sleep schedule being the totally random oddity that it is these days), and unable to get back to sleep in the middle of the night, I found myself trying to watch some news on tv. Their coverage is frustrating. Biased and shallow barely even begins to describe it.

I try to put myself in the place of the mythical "Average Joe". (No, I don't mean some piece of shit show that passes as "entertainment", but the original meaning of the term). Suppose watching tv is my only of knowing what's going on around the world. What do I see, specifically with regard to the troubles in Iraq?

Repeated ad nauseum are the same 2-minute stories about how many army casualties there have been in the past week. Footage of a U.S. vehicle exploding as it drives down the road, and some disturbing pictures of the Japanese hostages with knives to their throats. Then they cut to some stock footage showing the face of this Al Sadr guy who is apparently behind all the latest nastiness. He looks kind of scary, wearing a strange turban, so I figure he must be bad. But not to worry, U.S. forces are diligently advancing on his hideout in the city of Najav, where he will either be arrested or killed. The implication conveyed is that after we get rid of him, the road to "democracy and freedom", as the President likes to put it, will be clear. Just put this guy and maybe a few other thugs down, and then things will be all better.

Then there's a few cheesy human interest stories about some of the individual soldiers serving in Iraq. I feel sorry for them, whether I'm in the role of "Average Joe" or not.

Coverage of the President's latest speech features a few brief soundbites about needing to stay the course, and the possibility of increasing troop deployment. The coverage seems somewhat biased against him. The commentators talk about how he refused to apologize for anything his administration has done with regard to 9/11 or the Iraq war.

I, Average Joe, think, "Why should he apologize? 9/11 certainly wasn't his fault, and he's just trying to spread democracy to all those poor ignorant savages in Iraq. What's wrong with that? It must be the liberal bias in the media I've been hearing so much about."

Is this what Average Joe thinks? Is this why Bush's poll numbers, although lower than they've been in the past, are still hovering somewhere above 40%?

Watching the shallow, one-sided coverage on tv gives a totally different picture of things than getting news online from direct sources. During the entire time I watched, there was not a single mention of any Iraqi casualties, in Fallujah or elsewhere. Hostages were taken, some people from the U.S. army died from the attacks. (One report -- I think it was on CBS -- even flipped wording so far as to say that the U.S. forces surrounding Fallujah were "defending themselves" against the insurgents.) End of story.

Now read this. And this. And this.

Never before have I witnessed the television media fail so utterly. There is no excuse for this. They have money, they have resources, and if nothing else, they could go online and read about it just as easily as I can. Even the BBC News Hour coverage on the radio did a better job talking about the intricacies of the situation.

I am enraged not only at our President, but the complete loss of journalistic integrety in this country's press. It's not about a bias one way or another, but a total failure to report so many of the basic facts. (If anything, there was a somewhat liberal slant on ABC and CBS, but only within the confines of the tiny subset of information reported.)

But enough. It's time for me to walk home. I want to watch the new episode of Angel. Peace out.