Murdoch slagging the media

My friend pointed this out to me. I have to say, well done, Mr Murdoch!
I especially enjoy the bit about the American study:

Murdoch continued: "Mr. Rather and his defenders are not alone. A recent American study reported that many editors and reporters simply do not trust their readers to make good decisions. Let's be clear about what this means. This is a polite way of saying that these editors and reporters think their readers are too stupid to think for themselves."

To be fair though, the media in America created this stupidity they find in their readers through constantly manipulating them. I'm not saying European media is much better, but I'm just saying there is a reason why we know where Australia is and a surprising amount of Americans don't.

In any case, he is right. The blogosphere is massive, and the right people can exercise an astonishing amount of pressure.
Unfortunately, this also tells us how susceptible we all are to the media, something which is quite scary.

An Intelligent US President

Former US president Jimmy Carter shares his views on Israel's position on Palestine and nuclear weapons. I have to say that I think he seems like quite an alright bloke. As far as I can remember (and I can unfortunately mainly only remember the current President Bush) the US presidents have usually been of the species idiot. I can't really say I like Bill Clinton either, even though I can hardly remember any of his policies. Following his wife's campaign to become a presidential candidate I have, however, concluded that he belongs to the same species as Bush.
Were people wiser in the old days? I doubt it. The US history has suffered quite a few incompetent presidents, I mean, even the famous Lincoln himself had his weird policies.
Having spent 8,5 hours in the library today revising Khrushchev, Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky and Bukharin it makes my day a little brighter to see a political leader who isn't totally stupid. To be fair, I don't even know if I would count Carter as stupid at all since I don't know what he did during his term of office.
Anyway, thank you Jimmy Carter for making my day a bit brighter and making me not lose all hope in political leaders. Really, thank you!