Perhaps unsurprisingly, getting your news from outrage merchants does not help you get a handle on reality.

What is happening here is that television is altering the meaning of “being informed” by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation.

Liberal TV commentators tend to practice the same pattern. First they will recite a quote or show a film clip from a conservative, repeat the conservative claim out loud, and only then cite the facts contradicting the claim. Activists do the same. An Occupy Wall Street sign read, “Obama is not a brown-skinned anti-war socialist who gives away free