Are We Too Geared To The Media?

Notice the title is in the form of a question. Where would we be without a free press? (Oops, that's another question!) The problem I'm having is, we seem to gear so many things we do to the media. When we went into Iraq, the military decided to let a number of media personnel be "embedded" with various units (maybe the military is now "in bed with the media."). When we were searching for Bin Laden, the military gave briefings to the media about how we were tracking him and his entourage, as if Al Qaida didn't get reports on what was being said on American television and written in our newspapers. If you think back, we told them that we were monitoring cell phone calls! Strangely thereafter, Bin Laden quit communicating by cell phone and radio. Duh!!! Of course, the media and the military then said that Al Qaida had already figured out what we were doing, but how do we know that for a fact? Thank goodness we didn't tell everything in the media about the plans for D-Day in World War II, it would have been blabbed everywhere that we were going to land in Normandy. Back then, the media was far more responsible and, since television was just developing, there were no TV ratings to consider.

And let's not forget our elections, where in the Constitution does it say anything about the votes having to be counted within fifteen minutes of the polls closing so they can be put on TV? And further, let's not forget the times when the media issued "projections" about races that were given BEFORE the polls closed!!! After the hysteria of the 2000 presidential election, and the saga of the "hanging chads," etc., I think we got carried away, but much of this was led by the media giants claiming some sort of "right" to justify any process that would allow them to announce results quickly, not accurately, but quickly. Our overreaction to that whole episode gave us computerized touch screens that don't always work properly, or don't tabulate correctly. Maybe we need to go back to paper ballots, which are in fact used in some cases anyhow, if machines have mechanical problems. Forget about the media's crap about having the results quickly. I'm not saying that paper ballots are flawless, but we've certainly discovered that machines have problems too. Maybe having the personnel to count paper ballots is more expensive, but in a society where the integrity of elections is of the utmost importance, maybe we need to spend a little more money on the basis of our form of government, and NOT cut corners.