Can Stand The Competition

Elite Media Fret Over Alternative Media

All was well with the world when the mainstream media controlled the information flow and Democrats controlled the Congress, CBS's Lesley Stahl and MSNBC's Chris Matthews seemed to contend Wednesday night on Hardball. Matthews, who hosts a show of unedited opinions, rued how news is "coming out of blog sites and stuff that is unedited in a lot of cases, which is my big problem with it. There's no editors around." Stahl complained "it's contributing to the public's continuing dislike of us and mistrust of us. And we're all in this bowl together. 60 Minutes correspondents are the media. So are the bloggers." Stahl, who works for an outlet which used forged memos in a political hit job, lamented that instead of checking facts, "everyone is shooting from the hip, everybody. And it's a little scary." Matthews expressed how he's "gettin' nervous lately" that "since we don't have any Democrats in Congress controlling those committees, like John Dingell and Ed Markey and those guys...that we don't have enough subpoena action out there. Are we keeping a check on corporate power in America right now?" Stahl worried that many media outlets cannot stand up to power and rued that "if the press doesn't do these things, sometimes, our system won't be as self-cleansing as it has been in the past." - Media Research Centre