TV versus blogs...

I don't watch a lot of news-based programs on TV. I used to be glued to FOX news, and I used to be a huge O'Reilly fan. I kind of grew out of it. O'Reilly is entertaining, but he tends to bend facts to suit him and be mean to his guests, and I kind of got tired of it. I also bought a RePlay TV, and thus my days of flipping through channels for something to watch and settling on FOX News are over - if I want to watch something, I usually have about 20 hours of Law and Order reruns waiting for me. I've also tended to get more of my news from the internet, and most of my analysis from blogs.

There is one exception - a news analysis show that I make a point of recording - the Dennis Miller Show on CNBC. It's funny, I like Dennis' politics - hard on terrorism, softer on social issues - and it frequently has guests who are bloggers or writers for online magazines (Cathy Siepp, Hugh Hewitt, writers from NRO, Manhattan institute, the weekly standard, ect).

Every now and then, though, I will hear someone say something that is totally incorrect, and I wish the show was like a blog, where when someone makes a wrong statement, you can email them, or post in the comments with a link.

One I remember from a while ago was someone describing the no-fly list as "obviously it's a list of people who are not permitted to fly". But it's not - it's a list of people subject to additional scruitiny before flying.

Another one was on Thursday's show, where Bill Press was on the Varsity Panel. He said that the 9/11 report reflected badly on Bush because "he got this memo on August 6 that the terrorists were going to crash planes into buildings in New York and didn't do anything to it". This was unrebutted by Miller, who made a comment about Clinton not doing anything either. But it seems like a pretty glaring error since the memo said nothing of that sort. It did say in two places that New York was a potential target, and it also talks about a plot to hijack airliners in 1998. That plot was to release hostages, which is a very different thing than what actually happened. During a hijacking, people act exactly how the pilots on 9/11 act - like the target is the plane, not that the plane is a weapon.

Yes, there is stuff about planes and buildings, but nothing about flying the former into the latter. How was Bush supposed to connect a 3 year old plot and some people in NY taking pictures (which turned out to be Yemini Tourists)to what actually happened.

Anyway, that's what I like about blogs - it's easy to point out and refute lies or truth-twisting - something that is much harder in movies and TV. Sure, I can yell at the TV, but then my roomates start giving me dirty looks...