There’s no longer room for any debate about whether the press is liberal or conservative. In the end, it doesn’t matter. A media that fails to report the biggest story in half a century is either hopelessly conservative or incompetent, but either way it is irrelevant. It’s time to fire them.

Note to the mainstream media: it does no good to issue periodic mea culpas if you continue to commit the same acts of malfeasance. It does no good to have your public editor or your ombudsman dutifully record your reader’s outrage over your failure to cover the news in your editorial pages, if you do not respond to your reader’s legitimate concerns in the news sections of your newspaper.

Note to editors and publishers who are all atwitter over the latest circulation figures: Here’s an idea for you – if you want to reverse the free-fall in circulation, try reporting the news.

Circulation aside, the press has completely failed to fulfill their responsibility to inform the electorate – the basis for their First Amendment Rights, and a prerequisite for a functioning democracy.

There’s ample proof of this. We all know about the poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) which found that some 72% of Bush supporters went to their precincts and voted, believing that Iraq either had WMDs, or a had a major program for developing them, and that 75% of them believed that Iraq provided "substantial support" to al Qaeda, and a large majority believed that’s exactly what the 911 Commission Report found.

The reason Bush supporters didn’t know the facts is because Messrs. Bush and Cheney were allowed by the he-said, she-said press to use verbal sleights of hand, legerdemain and innuendo to mislead voters. Phrases such as "WMD-related programs" and "WMD-related program activities" were tossed around by the administration without being challenged by the press, despite the fact that the 911 Commission and the Duefler Report flatly contradicted the administration’s claims, and despite the fact that both the broadcast media and newspapers had issued mea culpas for failing to be sufficiently skeptical about administration claims in the run up to Iraq.

But a lesser known PIPA poll conducted on September 29th of 2004 showed that this was no isolated failure. Here again, Bush supporters didn’t know that the President held a different position from theirs on a wide variety of key issues that define our role in the global community.

According to the poll, 93% of Bush supporters favored environmental and labor standards in trade agreements, and 84% believed the President shared that view, although he does not. They were similarly misinformed about a number of other treaties the President opposes, including the comprehensive test ban treaty (68% supported it, and 69% believed the President did, too); the International Criminal Court (75% supported it, and 66% believed the President did): the Land Mine Treaty (66% supported it, and 72% thought the President did); and the Kyoto global warming treaty (54% supported it, and 51% believed the President also supported it).

This is prima-facie evidence of failure on the part of the press, if not bias. And while it’s true that Bush supporters were more likely to get their information from the Fox faux-news network, it’s also true that the mainstream media’s spineless he-said, she-said reporting made it easier for Fox’s lies and misrepresentations to stick.

For three years now, the press – with the exception of the Knight Ridder papers and a few others – ignored or gave short shrift to readily available and credible evidence that the Bush administration lied to us about their reasons for going to war. Now, we have a memo which resolves whatever doubt there could be about the administration’s honesty.

Seldom, if ever, has such concrete proof of such vile perfidy been dumped in the laps of the press, and seldom in our history has the press reacted so cravenly.

The news media is unwilling to hold the President accountable, but we can and must hold the press accountable.

Deception is costly. What we don't know can hurt us. Iraq has broken the back of the all-volunteer army. It has kept us from securing the homeland and safeguarding lose nuclear material abroad. It has multiplied the number of Muslims who hate America -- the recruiting base for al Qaeda -- by several orders of magnitude. It has squandered America's prestige and credibility. It has left us helpless to deal with real problems like Iran and North Korea.

It’s time for a national boycott against newspapers who are content to ignore outrageous lies, and seem to believe an occasional mea culpa will make up for it. It’s time to write those who advertise and underwrite the likes of O’Reilly, Scarborough, Limbaugh, the Washington Times and the rest of the later day Pravda imitators and tell them, "It’s your right to advertise where you want, but as long as you underwrite lies and the lying liars who tell them, we’re not buying your stuff."

After all, as President Bush himself once said, "Fool me once, shame on you ... fool me twice ...uhhh... you can’t get fooled again."

Let’s do our part to make him right for once.

John Atcheson has written extensively on politics and policy and his writing has appeared in the Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The San Jose Mercury News, The Memphis Commercial Appeal and several other papers, as well as various wonk journals. He has over 30 years experience in government and with the nation's premier think tanks.

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