"they will simply close their notebooks and quietly walk away."

Because that's what the media does when things don't reflect their worldview. The blogosphere has discovered that John Kerry made up a "searing memory" and yet no one in the media cares. Funny, I'm sure if Bush did that they'd be all over that.

I then look at the decline of people actually listening to the media. Funny that there's a "scandal" with newspapers faking their circulation numbers. Heck, the ProJo's parent company did it with the flagship paper in Dallas. Note that the tv people have been bleeding viewers for years.

In all that time, it's obvious that the "media" never once asked the question why. The answer is the media doesn't want the truth and can't handle the truth.

Unless the media actually takes a hard look at itself, it will find itself more and more marginalized until one day, no one will even notice it. But, it's not like they didn't have warnings.

Oh and for your sanity, don't want the network tv. It's so biased it's not even worth it. I just surf the web and get many different views. Works for me.

Your heading ["If A Tree Falls With no Press Coverage"] is both witty and chilling.

Some years ago, Jacques Ellul warned that the truly wretched of the earth were those--at the time, he specified the Tibetans--who received no press attention. Anything at all could be done to them and the world would neither notice nor care.

Let's pray that is not the fate of the swift boat veterans. Publicity costs money. Even the effort to acquire it costs. We can at least send them some. If we walk away, we are complicit in the media blackout.

We must not forget, for those of us old enough to remember, that big Media, Hollwood, Tin Pan Alley and Academia were all rabidly anti Nixon in 1972. Nonetheless, the "crook" took nearly all States and a huge majority of the popular vote. Yes the Watergate stupidity could be reproduced. But in today's post Clinton, morally relative world it would take the mother of all 'break ins' to nullify a Bush victory of equal Nixon/72 proportions.

In 2000, the mainstream media was more favorable to Bush than to Gore, even though more of them probably voted for Gore. Bush was the new kid on the block. He got a lot of favorable press reviews.

The election dynamic in mainstream reporting has more to do with their wanting a close and exciting election to report on than it does with their worldview.

This year, that dynamic works to Kerry's favor.

Maureen,

Why isn't there a full court press to get the Tibetans their state back? Because the Dalai Lama, unlike several Muslim leaders, isn't sending fanatical chelas to blow up shopping malls and busses in the name of getting one.