Archæologists are reporting the destruction of Babylonian sites by the presence of American and Polish military encampments on the ancient capitol of Western civilization.

In the entire expanse of Iraq the military was unable to find any other place to park tracked vehicles and couldn’t possibly have found any other source of dirt to fill sand bags that the artifact-filled land of an ancient city?

If anyone cares any more, this is probably classed as a war crime.

Depending on the M$M‘s acceptance of the right-wing equivalency claims, we have to listen to how Armstrong Williams’ secret acceptance of a quarter million dollars of government money to promote “Nickleby” on his syndicated media shows and his columns is the same as two liberal bloggers accepting consulting work with the Howard Dean campaign.

I must have missed the display on Williams’ columns and media appearances of a tag saying he was being paid by the Department of Education, you know, something similar to the blurb at the top of the Daily KOS when he was working for Dean. Of course, Jerome Armstrong didn’t have a blurb, because he didn’t blog while he was working for Dean, he just told everyone he had landed the work.

There is also the problem that the payments to Williams are quite probably criminal and are being investigated by the FCC and Congress, while the Dean payments were totally legal and openly reported in multiple government documents.

By now, anyone who listens to the news, reads news sites, or watches the news, has heard the disclaimers that the story being reported is about a group or company that funds the news. If the M$M understands that this is a requirement, why don’t they understand that this is what Williams did wrong?

August J. Pollak makes it plain.

Fact checking the claims in the discussion over Social Security, Jeanne Sahadi, CNN/Money senior writer, warns us:

That means truth – or at least the whole truth delivered in context – is sometimes sacrificed or exaggerated by both sides in the interest of making their point. Oh, and your friends and neighbors may have a few things wrong, too.

So beware the blarney.

She lists five examples of “exaggerations” with pop-up explanations, but the problem is the “even-handedness” of the media. Her explanations of all five points show who is making the “exaggerations”, who is “sacrificing the truth”, but she feels the need to imply that the people on the other side are just as culpable, apparently for exposing the distortions.

That one side of any controversy is known to be lying does not automatically mean that the other side is telling the truth, but, neither does it mean they are also lying. You evaluate the claims of both sides independently and report the facts: it is a concept that was once known as “journalism”.