Hell Today

ABC and NBC I didn't have high hopes for anyway, because they are corporate-whore suckups who say whatever they think will appeal most to the perceived stupidity of their audiences, but CBS often seems to be slightly more resistant to following the (R) party line in its programming. Last night, however, did CBS bother with a story on Republican robo-calling, the hottest political topic on the Internet, on its evening news? Well, no. I guess they were afraid they might offend somebody. Of course, they can have "CSI-Miami" showing a young man getting decapitated, running the scene over and over again from different angles as if to ask, "Is there anything we can do that will make people gag more than our last utterly repulsive episode?" But telling the American public that their ruling party is trying to cheat them, to fool them, to lie to them once again in order to influence their votes? No, no, that might upset someone.

Here's a rundown and some further comments from The Carpetbagger Report on coverage (in other words, lack thereof) on the network news last night:

* ABC World News Tonight devoted two minutes to a "Polls Show That The GOP Is Catching Up" story, which is dubious enough, and made no mention of the robo-calls.

* CBS Evening News devoted two minutes to a "Polls Show GOP Closing Gap; Democrats Nervous" story (and two a half minutes to a story about the USS Intrepid getting stuck at port), but not a word about the calls.

* NBC Nightly News devoted nearly four minutes to a "New Polls Suggest Election Is Tightening In Favor Of GOP" story (and two full minutes on the "Borat" movie), but neglected to mention the robo-call story at all.

So, getting back to Kevin's original question, "[I]s the mainstream media even going to bother reporting on the saturation robo-calling currently being funded and coordinated by the National Republican Congressional Committee?," the answer, apparently, is no.

If recent history is any guide, the media will trumpet the results of a poll next week showing that Americans, by and large, never heard about the robo-call controversy, and news outlets will express amazement at the results.

Here's hoping that there are enough American voters today who got the word on exactly who was making those phone calls.