Press Action: How the "Mainstream" Media Enables the Bush Administration ...: "Furthermore, by accepting government officials as the most valued of sources, journalism implicitly promotes the idea that these officials have something valuable to say.

There's a scene in a 2002 episode of The Simpsons entitled 'The Great Louse Detective' where, after discovering that Homer Simpson has in the course of the series annoyed quite a few people to the point that they want to physically harm him, Sideshow Bob remarks, 'None of this seems odd to you?' The members of the Simpson family don't see anything odd about this, because there is nothing odd about it within the context of the show.

This clever joke is an example of what does not happen in media coverage of the Bush Administration, just as it did not happen to the administrations that held power before January 20, 2001. Those who produce The Simpsons can publicly poke fun at the absurd nature of the context in which the story of the show resides. Journalists, on the other hand, if they want to keep the game going, don't have this option. If they were to make the obvious fact that Bush's comments were a mix of simplistic rhetoric and non-answers into one of the dominant discourses of the press conference, the press would effectively be saying the whole event was a sham. There goes their importance, prestige and (perhaps most importantly) ratings and sales. They can't say what actually goes on, so the charade continues."