If you go back to Wednesday on the Hugh Hewitt Show, Howard Kurtz, author of the new book, Reality Show, which looks in depth at the current world of the news divisions at the ABC, CBS and NBC, joined Hugh for two hours.  They had this following exchange about the ideology of the network newspeople, and why red state America just doesn't trust them:

HH: Here’s my proposition, Howard, and you’ve been studying them now for three years. The reason they’ve lost so much audience is that they have bad news judgment, and we don’t trust them. And we being the half of America that’s red, the red state Americans. And sure, they might be trusted by blue state Americans, but I just don’t trust these people to understand the news or to report it accurately, especially when it runs contrary to the interests of the left wing of the Democratic Party. Your reaction? 

HK: Well, I can’t dispute that the perception clearly is as you say as far as conservatives. In fact, there was a Gallup poll that I cite in the book showing that 65% of Democrats thought that Katie Couric is doing a good job as CBS anchor, 36% of Republicans. There was a similar but smaller gap for the other two anchors. So that is a problem for network news. I mean, it’s got a lot of problems, as we’ve been discussing. That is a problem.

Yes, it is.  Yesterday, I joined Ed Morrissey on his Blog Talk Radio program about the news of the day and week.  During the course of the hour, we talked about two stories that we both thought were the stories of the day, certainly, and ought to make the networks' nightly newscasts. But we both predicted that the MSM, nightly news division, would miss it.  

Story number one was the resolution of a multi-week story about Harry Reid and the Democrats deflecting away from Senate Republican resolution denouncing the MoveOn.org General Petraeus/betray us ad.  They picked fellow broadcaster Rush Limbaugh as a target weeks ago, using Media Matters erroneous talking points, and accused Rush of slandering the American military in a formal letter to Clear Channel executive Mark Mays, calling for his removal from the airwaves.  Rush demonstrated with ease that he was merely calling a fraud a fraud, pinpointing one man who embellished his service record into claims that were proven to be false.  Rush then obtained the original letter from Mays and to make a point, auctioned the letter on E-Bay for a Marine Corps charity as a shining example of where the United States Congress is actively targeting a U.S. citizen for political purposes. 

The bidding closed Friday, and $2.1 million dollars went to the charity, along with a matching donation from Rush himself.  Harry Reid's attempt to deflect on MoveOn.org's behalf backfired in a glorious manner. So what did Harry Reid do?  He spoke out on the Senate floor Friday and actually attempted to take credit for the raising of money for the charity, as though he had been in on the planning of the auction all along.  See for yourself here.

I can't remember the last time the majority leader of the United States Senate got beat that bad by PR stunt boomeranging back on him, and being shameless enough to actually try to take credit for his opponents' victory in the process. You'd think he would be laughed off the floor for a speech like this.  But Harry Reid knows better.  He still has allies in the mainstream media. 

Story number two of the day had to do with another uncharacteristically good investigative piece in the Los Angeles Times diving further into the Clinton fundraising machine, showing that the Democratic presidential front-runner has lost nothing from her husband's run in the 90's.  Their fundraising was crooked then, and it's just as crooked now, if anyone will just take a look.  According to the Times report, apparently every minimum wage earning dishwasher in Chinatown is donating $2,000 to Hillary Clinton.  Following up from the Norman Hsu bundling charges, the Times seems to be the only mainstream media outlet in America who sees Clinton-Hsu Investments for North America, or CHINA for short, as somewhat of a problem.  But again, to 25 million people who only get their news from Katie, Charlie or Brian at the networks, this simply doesn't exist. 

What exactly did those 25 million learn yesterday?  If they watched Katie Couric on the Tiffany network, they saw two minutes on the stock market crash, something that wouldn't have warranted two minutes at the lead if the market had made huge gains.  That was followed by two minutes of bad weather in the country (global warming undertone), 30 seconds on kids cold medicine warnings, 2 minutes of follow up to the attempted assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, one minute of the pedophile being caught, two minutes of a promo to watch 60 Minutes and see Valerie Plame dump on George Bush and Karl Rove, 3 minutes of Hemingway's cats, really, then two minutes of politics, on the trail with Hillary Clinton, not about her phony fundraising, but about how she's trying to shore up her women's voting bloc after new polling came out.  Finally, after 30 seconds of the Sands hotel being razed, the featured 3 minute feel good story about a lost bank bag returned to an elderly woman containing memorabilia from a lost Vietnam soldier.  Nothing about Reid, certainly nothing about the fundraising scandal. 

NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams didn't fare much better.  3 minutes on the cold medicine warning, 2 minutes on the stock market, 2 minutes on the weather, 2 minutes on Ron Paul, of all people, 1 minute of break-in coverage of a small plane crash into a building in Canada, 2 minutes of cities turning lights off for an hour at night to save energy, 2 minutes of drought in the South, and 2 minutes of feel good on building libraries in China.  Again, nothing about the news that red state America would consider news.

Charlie Gibson's World News Tonight is not available to watch on a podcast.  They have an edited version, but all their posted news stories and video were on a par with the other two.

While the blogs and talk radio and cable news have made huge inroads into why the viewership of the network news nightly broadcasts are declining, their numbers are still dwarfed by the 25 million that literally have no idea what they're missing.  So if you're a part of the new media, the next time you feel like resting on your laurels, realize there's still a lot of work to do.