The Daily Muse
The Media is the Massage
Get me rewrite

     The Mercury News tears up the front page mea culpa of San Jose Mercury News Executive Editor Jerry Ceppos over his paper's CIA-on-crack series has grave implications for the news biz we've come to know and hate...

     Ceppos' shocking pseudo-retraction/
apology is pretty serious stuff. After all, it got front-page play in the Washington Post and the New York Times. (Don't you love it when "the media" does stories about the media. Oops, we're doing it, too...)
     Where does this revisioning of journalistic history stop? One can only imagine:

  • The Post now says it made up that whole Watergate thing. Bob Woodstein recalls: "Look, we had the story, but we couldn't nail it. Bradlee wanted two sources. We only had one. So we had to...uh...pay off a guy who would swear on his deathbed that he wasn't Deep Throat."
  • The Times, feeling a might guilty itself, says the Pentagon Papers never really existed but were the product of 12 Monkeys typing randomly, "and look what they came up with. Amazing."

    •      We know what you're thinking, but let us say up front that The Daily Muse would never ever stoop to fabrication...

    Now we
    really know

         Once again, The Daily Muse failed to garner a Pulitzer Prize. No surprise there. However, the Pulitzer judges offered us consolation by confirming our suspicions about the real story behind TWA Flight 800...

         In recognizing Newsday for spot-reporting on the plane's mysterious explosion, the Pulitzer board filled in the remaining piece of the puzzle behind the tragedy: The Motive.
         They'll deny it, but who more than the Newsday staff had a vested interest in seeing the plane go down that fateful night last July?
         Until we hear something more plausible, that's what we believe. How about you?

         We manged to confuse at least one of our readers:
         "Jeezz, I did not do it!"--Floyd Ragan
         "Hello, Floyd. We did not mean to imply that you did. The question was aimed at gauging your belief about who did. But seeing how you are protesting your innocence ever so loudly, we may have to send the Feds your way..."--Standard DM reply

    Look Ma, no hype!

    MSNBC logo MSNBC logo MSNBC logo MSNBC logo MSNBC logo

    Stocks plunge anew in nervous trading
    Up, down--what's the diff?
    C:\ what happened the last time Mr. Gee messed with our beloved network...

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