Oh man, not this tired discussion agian.
Tambs, you weren't too hash on the media for their dilution of the message. In my opinion people should question the media every bit as much as the media questions the government. Unfortunatly info-tainment drives up advertisement revenues, and as long as it's more profitable to toss softball questions at this or any administration then that's what they're going to do.
I blame this all on the Screenwriter's Guild strike a few years ago. Because of them TV producers couldn't get anybody to write a decent fictional show so they hoarked up a bunch of reality TV shows to fill the voids in their fall line-ups. Now the news agencies think they have to make real life compete with TV reality, and the only way to do that is to fake it up and make it look semi-scripted. The reporters there in Crawford are probably coaching Ms. Sheehan the way reality TV producers coach their 'contestants' off camera. If it weren't for them and their support (read: instigation) she would have given up after the first week.