However, one person we know very well had the job assignment more than ....

Some people believe broad-based criticism of the media is a new thing attributed to the Internet allowing information consumers to shop for the news accounts they want to believe.

And as a result, as corrupt news gatekeepers, we intend to bury this bad-newsy item in the early hours of this morning so no one will find it and be able to leave snotty, all-knowing comments below about how biased "you medias are."

Obviously this was a skewed poll with biased results. Were you called for that poll? No, neither were we. In fact, we don't know a single one of the 1,000 Likely Voters they allegedly interviewed. So, it's a completely flawed sampling.

This includes an even-smaller 33% who said they were Very Angry at the media. The good news for American journalism is that fully about three-in-ten (31%) report being Not Angry at the news media.

And a minuscule two-out-of-three of them (66%) said they were at least Somewhat Angry at the nation's news media.

Some very disturbing poll news out the other day. Shocking too. It seems that some professional polling outfit named Rasmussen Reports surveyed a whole bunch of obviously subversive people.

...four decades ago of fielding criticism from print readers. In those days media critics used something called a "desk phone" that involved landlines connecting two hand-held mechanisms enabling people to talk without being cut off by a passing bridge.

There were numerous ongoing gangs of conspiracy-minded readers in those days; one in particular regularly erupted to complain about the clear conspiratorial absence of news coverage on the disappearance of a famous U.S. aircraft carrier. Informed that the absence of news coverage about the ship's disappearance was due to the fact that the ship had not actually disappeared, the callers became Very Angry with said media conspiracist and hung up.

To this day, many believe the media is filled with gangs of like-minded liberal journalists who march the nation's streets in large political packs (see photo above) seeking selected favorable factoids about the Harvard-like brilliance of a certain silver-tongued ex-state senator from the Democratic party whose record-breaking presidential fund-raising of $750 million showed an incredibly broad base of support among average Americans yearning for credible change and real hope following an unfortunate era of darkness that those same Americans had voted in.

And that a similar crowd of leftist-inclined journalists dutifully roams dirty alleys to collect negative info on things like the cob-webbed cognizance of some old Republican codger from Arizona who didn't use a BlackBerry and liked the Beach Boys.

Oh, and his loopy choice of a female GOP running mate who'd been elected governor of the nation's largest state. Some political paranoids saw a double standard just because those medias daily chronicled Sarah Palin's clothing, shoe color and hairstyle without equal attention to the boring suits and lack of hair of her opponent, Amtrak's most famous customer.

According to the new Rasmussen survey, 48% of Americans believe that intelligent, though liberal reporters are trying to help President Obama pass his amazing agenda whenever they write or talk about the handsome, basketball-playing father of two lovely young daughters with the cutest black dog with a name made out of the president's initials.

Fifty-five percent of Likely Voters say that news media bias about well-meaning Democrats simply trying to spend other people's money as quickly as possible and rich Republican suits with winter tans, country club memberships and tendencies toward moral hypocrisy is a bigger, more serious national problem than out-sized political contributions from special interests.

So, hypothetically, said reporters would be likely to focus on, say, the chief executive of a large foreign oil corporation attending a yacht race while a company oil well spewed tons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

And they'd likely overlook the inconvenient reality that at the very same time the chief executive of the United States was playing his gazillionth round of unphotographed golf while the same gooey spew continued.

Sixty-eight percent of Americans say they believe that reporters covering a political campaign would try to help the candidate they want to win while a majority (54%, up seven points since November 2008) believe reporters would try to hide information that would hurt their favored candidate.

This would help explain, for instance, why Americans never heard anything about the racist rants of Obama's long-time pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Rasmussen reports that 76% of Republicans and 56% of independents say reporters are trying to help the president's generous agenda to improve the life and health of every living American regardless of race, economic class or the costs while rebuilding an economy crippled by eight years of failed GOP policies and insufficient regulation from the nation's capitol.

On the other hand, 33% of Democrats say reporters are trying to block Obama's budget-busting agenda of galactic reforms that will cripple the fiscal future of generations of U.S. taxpayers yet unborn.

In case anyone read this far, forget it. Just move along. Nothing to remember here.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photos: Associated Press