CNN's disGrace (and your little Fox, too)

A devastating look at CNN's rating star.

From the Daily Howler:

On the other hand, Grace is so repellent a figure that she serves a useful purpose; she helps us see the moral and intellectual corruption spreading through our mainstream "news" culture.

The piece dates from 2003 and subsequent events prove the Howler a prophet.

The one grace note: Grace's performance does helps us see where our corrupted "news" culture is going.

So true. Thanks to her appalling performance as a guest on Larry King Live she was given a show of her own on Headline News.

This point cannot be repeated enough:

During the summer of 2001, bin Laden's gang was preparing its mission. But on King, they had bigger things on their minds; people like Grace (and the late Barbara Olson) were trying to smoke Gary Condit for murder.

The Howler includes links to a bunch of Condit-Levy posts. They deserve a careful reading. They demonstrate just how useful lies and rumors are to a tabloid frenzy and how little effort cable news makes to screen out such chaff.

While cable chased Condit, Atta and KSM plotted. I hope our Aruba madness is not the prologue to another 9/11-type shock.

Fox News has plenty of shows as bad as Nancy Grace which makes them worse than CNN. For some reason, FNC has escaped criticism from the press-bashing right blogosphere. If the New York Times or PBS ignores important stories from the War on Terror, that is really no surprise. But FNC's obsession with tabloid crime feels more like a betrayal.

Fox was supposed to be different. After 9/11 it wrapped itself in the flag and donned olive drab. Then it lost interest. It decided to chase stories about missing white girls. The MSM might be giving us an incomplete picture, but FNC is not trying very hard to correct it.

OK. Back to Grace. The Howler has a soundbite from 2001 which has new resonance:

GRACE: You know, the fact that [Condit] would lie about the simplest things, his relationship, a sex relationship-how are we supposed to believe what he says about more important things, such as the last time he saw her? Did they argue? Was she pregnant? Was there a five-year plan? I can't believe anything the man says.

Now that we know about Nancy Grace's own problem with the truth, that is a funny quote in a painful sort of way.