Reply #10: I first noticed it during the Reagan administration [View All]

The media are terrible to Carter, and all of a sudden, we get this amiable actor in the White House, and the press is all buddy-buddy with him.

During the Reagan-Mondale contest in 1984, a cartoonist contrasted the "Teflon candidate" (with scandal after scandal just bouncing off him) with Mondale, the "Velcro candidate" (with labels like "wimp" and "tax and spend liberal" sticking to him).

For me, though, the defining event was when the U.S. invaded Grenada and the Pentagon told the press that no reporters would be allowed along. This was the first time in U.S. history that reporters had been utterly banned from reporting on site. To their everlasting shame, the U.S. media, including NPR, just sat back and reported only the canned press releases that the Pentagon gave out, most of which were later proven to be lies. Even NPR's coverage was all, "Well, there's fighting in Grenada, but we don't know anything else."

Meanwhile, the reporters from CBC's As It Happens, also banned from the island, simply picked up the phone and called people who lived on Grenada to get on-the-scenes reports. What they reported--that the medical students were in no danger, that there were only 500 unarmed Cuban construction workers, and that the airstrip under construction was meant for tourism, not military purposes--was confirmed years later.

That was the point at which I began to feel that the media had sold out.