Is Hurricane Katrina the media's remdeption for giving Bush a blank check and sending this country to war. Starting with Traitorgate I've gotten the sense that they have been more aggressive and less accommodating to Bushes and Rove's lies.
One thing about Katrina is pictures don't lie and I guess even for the weakest of backboned reporters that's compelling enough to speak to the truth.
Viewpoint: Has Katrina saved US media?
By Matt Wells
BBC News, Los Angeles
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4214516.stm
As President Bush scurries back to the Gulf Coast, it is clear that this is the greatest challenge to politics-as-usual in America since the fall of Richard Nixon in the 1970s.
Mr Bush's famed "folksy" style has failed to impress in this crisis
Then as now, good reporting lies at the heart of what is changing.
But unlike Watergate, "Katrinagate" was public service journalism ruthlessly exposing the truth on a live and continuous basis.
Instead of secretive "Deep Throat" meetings in car-parks, cameras captured the immediate reality of what was happening at the New Orleans Convention Center, making a mockery of the stalling and excuses being put forward by those in power.
Amidst the horror, American broadcast journalism just might have grown its spine back, thanks to Katrina.
National politics reporters and anchors here come largely from the same race and class as the people they are supposed to be holding to account.
They live in the same suburbs, go to the same parties, and they are in debt to the same huge business interests.
Giant corporations own the networks, and Washington politicians rely on them and their executives to fund their re-election campaigns across the 50 states.
etc......