Domingo Soto: Because Freedom Isn't Dumb

ALL THE PRESIDENT'S NEWSMEN
" The Jan. 7 edition of "Crossfire," CNN's can stand as an exceptionally ripe paradigm of what is happening to the free flow of information in a country in which a timid news media, the fierce (and often covert) Bush administration propaganda machine, lax and sometimes corrupt journalistic practices, and a celebrity culture all combine to keep the public at many more than six degrees of separation from anything that might resemble the truth when it failed miserably to take Armstrong Williams, a conservative commentator, talk-show host and newspaper columnist to task for his role as the frontman for a scheme in which $240,000 of taxpayers' money was quietly siphoned to him through the Department of Education and a private p.r. firm so that he would "regularly comment" upon the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind policy in various media venues during an election year.
(NYT)