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This "access" whinefest by the media, which has been going on for the better part of the week, isn't legitimate and isn't about their ability to practice journalism.

I'm sorry, but I don't buy it. Howard Kurtz and his panel this Sunday, which included David Zurawik, Julie Mason and Bill Plante come across as still being pissed off that none of them had a chance to snap a picture of President Obama playing golf with Tiger Woods.

As Kevin Drum said, it would be easier to sympathize with these national reporters if they really did ask tough, unpredictable questions of the President, but they don't. And Drum's observations on the Politico article and their complaints about the White House using social media and going around the press, can be applied to the conversation here as well:

At the same time, the reporters interviewed for this piece seem to be weirdly upset over the fact that the Obama White House uses Twitter and Facebook and releases lots of its own photos. Why is this a problem? It's 2013, guys. Why shouldn't a president communicate with the public using whatever mediums the public happens to consume? Over the past century, that's evolved from whistle-stop tours to radio to TV to Facebook, but so what? Why should reporters be unhappy about this?

Given the sorry state of our corporate media these days, I don't think they're going to get much sympathy from most of the public.

Transcript below the fold.

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From Reliable Sources, Howard Kurtz hosts a panel discussion on Lou Dobbs departure from CNN. I guess Howard thinks bringing in bullying, right wing, Rush Limbaugh wanna-be hack Chris Plante to concern troll for Dobbs somehow made this panel "balanced". All it did was make it ridiculous.

Plante uses an extremely broad brush to throw around accusations of "liberal" media bias. Anyone think Campbell Brown who's married to Dan Senor is a "liberal". Or that Larry King is an "opinion show"? Or that Chip Reid is any less of a Villager hack than the rest of them out there just because he worked for Joe Biden? Or George Stephanopoulos because he worked for Clinton but subjects us to endless interviews with McCain since he lost the election and George Will's sour mug every week? Liberal my ass. Plante also defends Dobbs for both his anti-immigrant rants and birther rhetoric.

Transcript via CNN.

KURTZ: Chris Plante, many liberals cheering Dobbs' sudden exit. A "New York Times" editorial called him close to a right wing ranter who distorts the facts. Is the media being fair to Lou Dobbs?

PLANTE: Well, of course not. Well the reason Lou Dobbs was in trouble is not because he has opinions, it's because of what his opinions were and his opinions are out of lockstep with the rest of the mainstream news media. "The New York Times" in their -- pretty much every report also say that he's a crusader against immigrants, or immigration and that's false. It's a misrepresentation and it speaks to their point of view. And maybe "The New York Times" should be taking a look at itself rather than Lou Dobbs.

KURTZ: Eric Deggans, Dobbs for years was a conventional business anchor, but do you believe in recent years that he became more of a crusader than a journalist?

DEGGANS: I think it's obvious and I could not disagree more with your previous panelist's assertions. It became obvious that Lou was pressing this world view about illegal immigration being at the root of a ton of evils in America, and I think a lot of his conclusions were debatable.

"60 Minutes" exposed that he had said things about illegal immigrants causing a rise in leprosy in the United States that just could not be backed up. And he's also made assertions of the criminality of illegal immigrants that statistics just don't bear out. So opinions are one thing, but to be unfair and to make assertions that are not true or to exaggerate using selective data, that is just not something that's very ethical and very fair or anything that helps anyone.

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Countdown's Worst Persons for May 26, 2009. Winner Laura Ingraham. Runners up David Zurawik and Pete Hegseth.