Letter: News media letting Bush team continue to lie

Thursday, June 9, 2005 | 8:59 a.m.

Mostly because of the lack of investigative reporting by the news media, the Bush administration continues to ignore or deflect questions about its poor decisions and the worldwide instability that these decisions have generated.

Our leaders fail and then tell us how well they're doing. President Bush undertakes new programs that will further increase deficit spending while ignoring more pressing problems like the lack of health care for 45 million Americans. Our borders are still not secure. Our young people continue to die fighting a war based on fictitious threats against our security.

How is it possible that these glaring problems go unaddressed? Conservative talk show hosts tout every administration utterance with unabashed support without any discussion of opposing views. The Bush administration has paid influential organizations to help sway public attitudes towards administration policies. Not since the Nixon administration have we seen such arrogance and disregard for the truth.

It was recently discovered that a person using an alias was allowed to participate in White House press briefings, usually providing softball questions that promoted the Bush agenda. How should the American people regard the ability of our government to protect us when it can't even detect an impostor within 20 feet of the president? We may never know the truth about anything if the news media continues to cower while conservatives cultivate the myth that the media is driven by "liberal elitists."

PHIL VENTURA