I have to admit

I'm a bit surprised that Tucker Carlson is still employed at MSNBC...they must be burning out his contract -- or else they're afraid to hire a woman to helm a show by herself...especially when she's teh gaii. However, as Glenn Greenwald points out there are few journalists better at unintentionally revealing the hackdom that is, especially, broadcast media in this country:

...since journalistic standards in Great Britain are so much dramatically lower than they are here, it's a little much being lectured on journalistic ethics by a reporter from the "Scotsman," but I wonder if you could just explain what you think the effect is on the relationship between the press and the powerful. People don't talk to you when you go out of your way to hurt them as you did in this piece.

Anyone who has seen an hour of BBC News would laugh uproariously at this comment. British interviewers don't "blow" people the way our broadcast media do; they don't treat them as their buddies who they'll see out at a dinner party in a week or too; they don't think balanced journalism is bringing a sane person and a crazy person on together and letting the one who screams the loudest win; they certainly don't think that "tough" journalism is holding up some nine-year old statement as a "gotcha"; and they certainly don't treat everything as off the record.

No, they challenge the powerful, the best journalists, and there are certainly more in British broadcasting then here, never let the powerful forget they are responsible and accountable to the people they govern. Here, in this country, the place with the First Amendment, politicians are treated like Hollywoood Celebrities are treated by their press agents. Corruption is treated as "part of the game" to be reported as a sporting event; and the only sex scandals are of any real meaning. And a real war is treated like it's a "war movie, preferably one of those heroic World War II jobs" [General "Patton" minus "Private Ryan" equals "Major Dysfunction"].