Greenwald rips establishment media

Glenn Greenwald spent his weekend doing a little research on what the media covers:

Here are the number of times, according to NEXIS, that various topics have been mentioned in the media over the past thirty days:

“Yoo and torture” - 102

“Mukasey and 9/11″ — 73

“Yoo and Fourth Amendment” — 16

“Obama and bowling” — 1,043

“Obama and Wright” — More than 3,000 (too many to be counted)

“Obama and patriotism” - 1,607

“Clinton and Lewinsky” — 1,079

Of course, this is nothing new. We know the media in this country tend to cover the trivial and hollow, especially on cable news. What’s interesting about Greenwald’s post isn’t so much the numbers, but his analysis:

Needless to say, these serious and accomplished political journalists are only focusing on these stupid and trivial matters because this is what the Regular Folk care about. They speak for the Regular People, and what the Regular People care about is not Iraq or the looming recession or health care or lobbyist control of our government or anything that would strain the brain of these reporters. What those nice little Regular Folk care about is whether Obama is Regular Folk just like them, whether he can bowl and wants to gorge himself with junk food.

Hey Chris Matthews, care to help us us visualize this?

See also:

+ State of the Media