The administration's been blessed with good timing. With journalism scandals at the New York Times and CBS creating headlines, conservatives relentlessly charging that newsrooms have a liberal bias, and a wartime culture that historically makes reporters more docile, the administration has encountered little pushback.

Still, some media organizations -- albeit outside the Beltway -- have acknowledged the disturbing trend. The Chattanooga Times Free Press undressed the White House in a recent editorial, condemning it for its "unconscionable, contemptible, and frankly anti-democratic" attempt "to distort media coverage with paid agents, lies and outright propaganda." Meanwhile, the consistently conservative Houston Chronicle chastised the White House for "setting up ringers to toss fawning questions to the president," saying that was "another indication, if any were needed, that the administration prefers the media to be propagandists rather than independent inquisitors." But as with so much that happens with the Bush administration, a dogged timidity continues to plague the press, even when the issue is the way it is being deliberately undermined by administration officials and their eager allies inside the press corps.

"If you look at the career of [Fox News CEO] Roger Ailes, his disdain for journalism is apparent," says Brock. "He's actively trying to undermine it at Fox." The work of Fox and Sinclair and others is crucial because they help muddy the facts by deliberately spinning, or ignoring, stories to suit the White House's needs -- thus helping to create those red state and blue state facts.

One small example, the type that occurs almost hourly on Fox, came during the recent controversy over comments by CNN's news president Eason Jordan about U.S. troops targeting journalists in Iraq. (The comments eventually led to his resignation.) On Feb. 14, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade interviewed Reese Schonfeld, one of CNN's founders, who years ago left the company.

Schonfeld: "But remember that a U.S. tank [in April 2003] rolled up in front of the Hotel Palestine, which is where all the journalists were, turned the turret around, pointed its gun, and fired up at the building."

Kilmeade: "That's what CNN reported."

Schonfeld: "No, that's what is reported. The guy from Reuters was killed, and a Spanish journalist was killed. Nobody knows why. The U.S. Army has never completed its investigation into that incident."

Schonfeld was correct on the facts regarding the Hotel Palestine incident, which are not in dispute. But the Fox host wanted to suggest the facts were in dispute, or subject to CNN's bias, therefore making them easier to set aside. "They have an ability to confuse an issue and neutralize the facts that aren't in their favor," says Brock. "When a reader looks at a story and does not know what to make of it, then Fox has done its job."

The consequences are enormous, says Auletta. "In a democracy, you need a common set of facts."

Suskind notes, "If you believe there is no inherent value to public dialogue based on fact, then that frees you up to try all sorts of things other people in power wouldn't have ever thought of. And we're seeing the evidence of that now."

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