Jack Germond on Politics, Schiavo

Jack Germond addressed the Atheist Convention in Philidelphia this past weekend.  I was interested to find that his address was covered in the religious press.  I was also interested to see that the coverage was more or less straight coverage of his remarks with no editorializing (this is unusual for CNS News).  Without further ado, here is the link to the story:

Schiavo Case 'Grotesque' Exercise, Jack Germond Says (more below the fold)

Germond notes three factors in the decline of politics:

1. money
   
2. the undue influence of TV news, which oversimplifies issues, and
   
3. the influence of religious organizations on politics, particularly fundamentalist groups.

All in all, this is an excellent story and Germond's remarks are very cogent and timely.  I googled Germond in News and on the regular google search page, and I found this extended coverage ONLY in the religious press.  There was a local (PA) source that covered a few of Germond's remarks in the context of a writeup of the conference as a whole .

I would also note this remark:

Germond also said the life-or-death battle over the brain-damaged Florida woman had become a "spectacle" in part due to the tendency of news channels on cable television to give equal weight to both sides of a story.

This is very insightful.  The tendency to "tell both sides" is also a serious problem in coverage of anti-evolution politics.  What typically happens is that in an effort to be "fair" to "both sides" someone with a lower degree of technical knowledge in the field is given equal weight in the press coverage as an expert, as if the two individuals' qualifications are comparable, or their views had a similar degree of acceptance among biologists.  

This same phenomenom occurred with the relentless trotting out of Hammersfahr in the Schiavo case.  It is foolish: it's not appropriate to air the views of someone who is mindnumbingly wrong in the interest of "fairness".  Such a practice is actually deceptive.

At any rate, I mostly wanted to provide a pointer to the coverage of what Germond had to say, as it doesn't seem to be anywhere in the MSM.