Baseless and Unfounded? No Problem for ABC News!

Every now and then, when you hear traditional media whine about how bloggers and online news gathering organizations don't have the journalism sack to deliver a quality, well-researched story, you might quite naturally begin to feel little sorry for the old-timers as you watch them stagger like wounded dinosaurs, the life draining from their collective bodies.

And then, like a ray of bright summer sunshine, an outfit like ABC News comes along to remind us that we can still see triceratops in the museum, so extinction can sometimes be a good thing.

Via Media Matters comes an interesting commentary on the boy reporter Dan Harris, who, while reporting online about the faux-issue of President Obama's recent speech to school students, actually allowed a nugget of truth to escape from his kisser:

While the media loves a good fight -- even when the charges are unfounded -- there may be more to conservatives' complaints that play into larger concerns about the president on health care reform.

And that's the dirty little secret of media today - it's about the fight, not the substance.

Instead of delivering some of the hard-hitting journalism that separates fact from fiction, Harris (and others like him) are content to hand oversized mallets to participants, then sit back and provide the commentary as both sides proceed to Tom & Jerry each other for entertainment purposes.

Does anyone remember when facts mattered?