"Not only did the quality decline- but the propaganda has become excruciatingly obvious. Hardly a sentence I read is without a slant, a twist or an outright attempt to manipulate..."
It's ideological. If you look at the Right, you'll see the GOP grudgingly move in the correct direction on an issue (e.g. immigration) when the grass roots raise enough h3!!.
When the Left loses a national election, however, (e.g. 2004 Presidential race), their leadership cries out that America needs to be better educated on their views ("Our message didn't get out" they'll claim).
In other words, change the masses rather than change the views of the Left.
To that end, their willing minions in the news media go to further extremes to manipulate the Public (because the Public is otherwise rejecting the Left's messages).
This has led the news media down a path of diminishing returns...they have to be more and more sensationalistic (e.g. "Karl Rove is a traitor!") to get less and less support.
Drug addicts learn of this cycle the hard way, fast. Politics is slower. Same eventual end for both, though.
It's simply awful- every news article has become an editorial.
It struck me when I read this from one of the pieces TexKat posted above:
A Youssifiyah resident, who claimed his house was searched by U.S. soldiers Sunday afternoon, also said the Americans used translators to offer $100,000 for information leading to those who took the soldiers.
He said he would not cooperate because he was angry with the Americans.
"I will not do it even if they pay $1 million," the resident said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he feared retribution. "They deserve all that they are facing … We are living a hard life because of them."
When reading this- I wondered if it occured to the writer to add something like- at the same time, in other parts of Iraq we hear gratitude expressed by locals...
Back on topic- these guys were in an extremely hostile area where the residents ARE the bad guys.