More on media coverage of Iran...

Articles and sources for this week's 'toon:

• On the mainstream media's coverage of Iran, check out: Gal Beckerman, Mark Weisbrot and Robert Naiman, Paul McLeary, Greg Mitchell, FAIR, Glenn Greenwald, and Media Matters. The biggest offender so far has been (surprise!) The New York Times, particularly some earlier reporting by former Judy Miller cohort Michael Gordon. Apparently, they've forgotten all of the lessons from the WMD debacle (enumerated by Dan Froomkin).
  
  Media Matters also has an entry on some weak interviewing by Wolf Blitzer. This week's 'toon was meant to be a shot at all cable and network news, but, of course, the main character resembles Wolf (actually, I meant for him to be a cross between Wolf and Jerry Garcia). Wolf is just so easy to make fun of. The other guy could possibly be CNN goof Rick Sanchez.


• Noam Chomsky gives us a hypothetical: say Iran had invaded Mexico, had sent a massive armada of naval vessels to the Caribbean, and was making all kinds of noise about attacking the U.S. if we didn't terminate our nuclear programs immediately... what would we do? His point is that "the debate over Iranian interference in Iraq proceeds without ridicule on the assumption that the United States owns the world."


• Check out Tony Dokoupil on UW professor Doug Underwood's study on the connection between intoxication and journalism (in this case, good journalism... unlike in the cartoon). In particular, this caught my eye:

  Psychologists have shown that neurotics can make good journalists when they project their inner doubts and dissatisfactions onto the world. This is the energy behind investigative reporting and the source of journalism's vaunted distrust of power, the argument goes. "Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers," (newsman Jimmy) Breslin says.

  
  Well, that sounds like a pretty good description of... umm... never mind.