Top Stories of the Year

Here is a piece setting forth the top 10 stories of 2005, in the opinions of the members of the Associated Press.

Note that Hurricane Katrina was #1. It's ironic, but at the same time, totally fitting that, as the facts increasingly reveal, the press' "big story" is turning out to have been reported with great inaccuracy and exaggeration. As this story points out, most of the assumptions the press made -- and propagated to the nation -- were wrong. In fact, the victims were not disproportionately poor and weren't disproportionately black, either.

Not that facts will get in the way of the press' continuining glorification of itself and its coverage of the hurricane. Wistful stories like these from yesterday's LA Times (here, noting the return of "advocacy journalism", and here, noting that reporters had "predicted" the disaster) indicate that the press considered its Katrina coverage -- angry, righteous and, oh yes, often inaccurate (but let's not talk about that last) -- to have been a high point. No wonder Anderson Cooper and the others can't seem to let go.

For a more solid look at the stories the MSM ignored or forgot, check out this piece from The American Thinker. While reporters were attitudinizing in the streets of New Orleans, these are some of the stories they "forgot" to cover.