This is one of the most extraordinary pieces of video you'll see this week

CNN's Don Lemon became a hero last week. It takes a lot of guts to admit to having been victim of a pedophile on national television, particularly when you are on the air every day. But the people Lemon is talking to here sound like any other cultists in thrall to a charismatic leader. Their denial, their refusal to believe that the man to whom they're in thrall could be a pedophile predator, shows how much Long has been able to worm his way into people's heads. Kudos to Don Lemon for eing brave enough to point out that he knows this is how pedophiles work because he's experienced it himself:

Shorter CNN: AAAUUGGGHH!!!! TERRORISTS!!!!!

Last night, around 6:30 PM, a car bomb was found in Times Square:

A crude car bomb of propane, gasoline and fireworks was discovered in a smoking Nissan Pathfinder in the heart of Times Square on Saturday evening, prompting the evacuation of thousands of tourists and theatergoers on a warm and busy night. Although the device had apparently started to detonate, there was no explosion, and early on Sunday the authorities were still seeking a suspect and motive.

Here in the New York area, where the event actually occurred, the local news channels are handling the story with unusual and laudable care, focusing on what we actually know so far, which is what you see above, and that the device malfunctioned and did not detonate.

Over at CNN, however, the hysteria is in full flower. The unidentified female newsbot talking to a former NYPD investigator seemed astonished at the idea that this could be anything but a Muslim terrorist attack, after said investigator indicated that what is MORE worrisome is the possibility of "another Timothy McVeigh." Apparently that possibility had never occurred to the bot that now passes for a media journalist on what used to be the most trusted name in news. T.J. Holmes referred to it as a "terrorist threat." And Alan Chernoff and Susan Candiotti were just on, live from Times Square, debunking the network's own previous coverage of people having seen a man running from the car.

This is the state today of the television journalism that reaches a nationwide audience: wild conjecture gets "out there", becomes fact, and suddenly whatever comes along later becomes unimportant. There's no fact-seeking, there's no reporting on "Here's what we know to be true" (as there is on the local channels).

Because at CNN, it's more important to try to rile up the teabaggers in the flyover states, who are at only miniscule risk of being actual targets for actual Islamic terrorists, for ratings than it is to actually get the facts.

The last great journalist at CNN is out

First it was Christiane Amanpour jumping ship to ABC:

Now , via Nicole Belle, comes the news that the last great journalist from CNN, Michael Ware, has been tossed out on his ear, after having bled and torn open his soul doing courageous and brually honest coverage of the Iraq War:

In addition to having taken a break recently in order to work on his book, it is no secret that he has been grappling with PTSD, brought on from the hellish years he worked in Baghdad. I was told that, unfortunately, when he needed more time off in order to deal with things, his request was denied. So he will not be returning.

While it is a huge loss for us (and for CNN) I am extremely relieved that he chose to take care of his own needs first. And while I sincerely hope that he will return to US television someday on another network, it is far more important that he gets the care he needs.

His work for CNN over the past four years has been an astonishing and brutally honest look at the causes and results of war. Not easy subject matter to watch… but he made us care. His urgency and passion burst through our television sets and made us pay attention, made us want to understand.

Personally, I will never forget the first time I heard him, speaking with Anderson Cooper via telephone to discuss Saddam Hussein’s trial as well as an article he had just written about an embed he had been on in Ramadi. It wasn’t even five minutes of airtime, but it was riveting. When it was announced that he would be joining CNN, I was delighted, because it meant we would be getting even more insight from him. And that we did — he worked like a stevedore, appearing on CNN at all hours of the day and night to make sure that we knew what was really going on in Iraq. As a viewer, you could tell that it mattered to him that the American people understood the issues in this far-away war of ours. He didn’t give a damn about the politics; he cared about what the grunts were going through and what the innocent Iraqi citizens (whose blood, he had to keep reminding us, is no less valuable than ours) were suffering.

His work was always insightful and informative, and on the too-rare occasions when he was able to do longer-format programs for them, it was like being in a classroom. He knew the material cold and presented it in a way that made it easy to comprehend. He is far from the average buffed-and-polished pretty boy posing for the camera. He’s real. He’s a guy — sorry; a bloke — you’d want to sit down and have a beer with, to ask how he’s doing and how he copes with all the craziness he reports on. And want to ask more about what he knows, what he’s seen, what he’s witnessed … no matter how unpleasant the answers would be to hear.

And exactly how does a news organization justify (to themselves, even!) not giving their war correspondents whatever they need in order to deal with their wounds, whether they are visible ones or not? If ABC had treated Bob Woodruff so callously, there would have been hell to pay. I don’t doubt they wanted him back in the field ASAP — doubly so after losing Christiane Amanpour — but don’t force him to make a choice between getting better and getting paid. That just sucks. Surely it would be better to have him off the air but still yours once he is ready to come back than to have him off the air and someone else’s upon his return? So not only has CNN made a callous move here, they have made a stupid one, as well.

I remember Michael Ware doing reportage for the late and still lamented Morning Sedition. The thing with Ware was that his style was so intense that you often couldn't tell whether he was doing parody or the real thing -- until he went to CNN and we found out that it was all for real. Ware, like Greg Palast, is what investigative journalism that seeks out truth used to be about. Palast can't get work in the U.S. It remains to be seen if Ware will either. Inconvenient truthtellers are usually not wanted here.

CNN (hearts) Hillary Clinton

Boy, CNN really, really, really wants Hillary to be the Democratic nominee -- along with every other major corporation. You kind of have to wonder why that is and why those who think she's going to be some kind of force for change don't find anything odd about that.

But the one person for whom you have to feel badly is Maria Luisa Parra-Sandoval, the UNLV student who asked Hillary if she prefers diamonds or pearls. Yesterday I was listening to Randi Rhodes and the callers were just brutal to this kid for asking such a trivial question.

Turns out that CNN told her what to say:

"Every single question asked during the debate by the audience had to be approved by CNN...I was asked to submit questions including "lighthearted/fun" questions. I submitted more than five questions on issues important to me. I did a policy memo on Yucca Mountain a year ago and was the finalist for the Truman Scholarship. For sure, I thought I would get to ask the Yucca question that was APPROVED by CNN days in advance. CNN ran out of time and used me to "close" the debate with the pearls/diamonds question."

Now, if I'd been in her shoes, I'd have either said "Fuck you, I won't do it" or said "OK" and then asked the question about Yucca Mountain anyway. After all, what are they going to do to me? Escort me out, at the end of the debate?

But I'm not a college student, and I'm not going to fault a 20-year-old for not being that quick on her feet in a nationally-televised situation. I am going to fault Randi's staff a bit for not getting the information about how CNN dictated the question to her, because it was already on the blogs by yesterday afternoon. And it's clear that many people were angry about the question, because Parra-Sandoval's MySpace page where the above quote that was reprinted at Huffington Post originally appeared is now set to private. (More here and here.)

There are two extraordinary articles in today's New York Times today; articles which we never would have seen were it not for the blogs, and which demonstrate clearly where the Times goes looking to see what stories are newsworthy. One of them is on Rudy Giuliani's change of tune about universal health care since he became a Republican presidential front-runner, and the other further serves to damns CNN for its obvious Hillary partisanship by having James Carville as part of the post-debate panel:

Among the experts trotted out by CNN to comment was James Carville, a Democratic strategist and CNN commentator who is also a close friend of Mrs. Clinton and a contributor to her campaign.

Mr. Carville’s presence aroused the fury of rivals and bloggers. They called it a conflict of interest and criticized CNN.

“Would it kill CNN to disclose that James Carville is a partisan Clinton supporter when talking about the presidential race?” Markos Moulitsas wrote on his liberal blog, Daily Kos. Mr. Moulitsas drew hundreds of comments.

Tom Reynolds, a spokesman for Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who is also seeking the Democratic nomination, said: “What you saw last night lacked full disclosure. The average viewer out in middle America may not know the inside-the-Beltway connection.”

A CNN executive conceded that the cable channel should have more fully disclosed Mr. Carville’s past and that it was discussing how to handle such situations.

The criticisms were among a series against CNN for how it managed the debate, a two-hour event in Las Vegas that ran nearly 15 minutes late. Viewers criticized segments like the opening, when candidates bounded onto the stage in a style reminiscent of a sports event.

Voters and commentators wrote online about how the audience cheered and booed, the way the CNN hosts reframed audience questions and whether it was correct to demand yes-or-no answers to complex questions.

Maria Luisa Parra-Sandoval, a student who asked Mrs. Clinton whether she preferred diamonds or pearls (Mrs. Clinton answered “both”), said she had prepared a list of more serious questions but had been directed by CNN to ask her trivial question.

CNN said the debate was the most watched in this campaign, drawing more than four million viewers.

Viewers directed most of their criticism at the commentary. The channel has been ridiculed by conservative groups as the Clinton News Network, partly because its commentators include Mr. Carville and Paul Begala, an adviser to President Bill Clinton.

Mr. Carville said in a phone interview that he did not have a role in Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and that he had “never been paid a nickel by her.”

He also said he considered her a close personal friend, had contributed to her presidential effort, had friends working for her campaign, planned to vote for her in the Virginia primary and spoke to Mr. Clinton regularly.

Carville too has a tin ear when it comes to such political connections, and obviously inadvertently told us how business is done in Washington by thinking that having "never been paid a nickel" somehow makes him less partisan towards her than being a close personal friend -- implying that money is the only currency of political support.

It is only to the good that CNN's obvious and han-fisted efforts to give Hillary Clinton a rebound after her subpar performance in the last debate is seeing the light of day. One can only hope that Iowa and New Hampshire voters ask themselves why the giant corporate media companies are trying so hard to get her the nomination. But equally important is the presence, albeit on page A34, of two stories that in the absence of blogs, would never, ever have seen the light of day in the mainstream media. Now granted, the blogs that gave "diamonds or pearls" story traction are alpha dogs like ThinkProgress, HuffPo, and the Talking Points Memo family of sites, but I don't care where the mainstream media finds these stories, as long as they pick them up and get them out there where the vast majority of Americans who don't yet read blogs get their news. Let it be an embarrassment to those outlets that refuse to cover them.