Well it's New Years 2006 and all the talk shows, magazines and editorialists are conducting their year-end reviews of 2005. The big stories, big blunders and political mistakes of 2005 are the talk of the mainstream press. But the real question is: while the media are watching Washington D.C. and public policy issues, who is watching the media? And how would you grade the mainstream press' performance in 2005? The media loves to proclaim themselves as the invisible hand in the information age, the "newspaper of record" the New York Times calls itself. The message is: we are not the story. Just pretend we are not here. But in 2005, the media definitely was a big part of the story.

 How about in Hurricane Katrina? The media is reporting with glee this week how George W. Bush failed to respond the disaster. But it was the media who reported the New Orleans had "dodged a bullet" (NBC Nightly News) just after Katrina passed over. We were told three people were dead. Then the press went the other way and reported rapes that never happened and murders that never occurred. They estimated 10,000 dead, a 90% overshoot. We also observed both Brian Williams and Campbell Brown of NBC "leading" their guests in anti-government sentiment, the latter conducted with a small boy NBC brought back four times.

 How did the media do on Iraq? The Media Research Center has put out an extensive report indicating that the coverage was overwhelming negative and has become increasing so in 2005, by as much as 5 to 1 in some cases and 10 to 1 in others. All in all, most of the coverage consisted of bombs, craters and twisted metal, with a large dose of "yes, but" reporting on top of any good news. Interim elections went well, "but", the Constitutional vote was admirable, "but"; the permanent voting was a surprising turnout of Sunnis, "but" that does not mean they will all cooperate. With the exception of Joe Lieberman, no Democrat ran to a microphone to balance out a "bad" story on Iraq.

 What about leaks? There were lots of them in 2005 and the media double standard prevailed. When someone inside the White House was accused of leaking the name of a CIA desk jockey, Valerie Plame, the media went ballistic, demanding resignations. Her husband, Joe Wilson, was treated as nothing less than the Oracle of Delphi and was left alone, despite the major holes in his story. On the other hand, when the increasingly rogue CIA itself leaked the existence of interrogation sites in Eastern Europe, and when the New York Times leaked a secret Spying program run by the NSA, apparently they were "just doing their job. "Far be it from any of us to shine a light on the fourth estate.

 Then there was the atrocious economic reporting in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. We were told the economy would take a "big hit," that unemployment would rise nationally. More importantly, $3 dollar a gallon gasoline demanded that we drag oil company CEOs into Congress to defend "price-fixing" and obscene profits. We must "do something" about all this!

 Well the short-term chicken littles were wrong. The economy adjusted, prices came down, the resourceful got even better jobs elsewhere and the economy grew. New jobs were plentiful at 200,000 per month. If people stopped listening to the mainstream media, optimism might just take hold!

 I could go on and on, but you get the point. Fidel Castro is idolized as an agrarian reformer, while entertaining Barbara Walters and Robert Redford. (Gee, Barbara, why didn't you ask him about heaven?) By the way the Wall Street Journal ran a piece yesterday that talked about Cuba draining all the blood from political prisoners before executing them and selling their blood to Vietnam for $50 per pint. Still, life is not too bad in Cuba, according to the MSM.

 Apparently Saddam Hussein has learned a lot too. He has been studying the Democrat/ MSM playbook under the bed-covers ( When walked in on, he simply opens the Koran) in great detail and is mounting a well thought-out, three-pronged defense against Bush.

   1. The war was illegal and his office of president was stolen. (Sounding like Al Gore and John Kerry)
   2. The trial is unfair. He knows this because Ramsay Clark, a Democrat, told him it was.
   3. America is conducting illegal torture and he will prove it, as soon as Dick Durban writes his speech for him.

 So give the mainstream media an F for 2005. ( or a zero if you prefer) And I didn't even mention Terry Moran of ABC asking Dick Cheney to discuss intelligence specifics on national television! The best news is that few of you take these people seriously anymore.

  John Pendleton