After Al Gore spoke out against war with Iraq, media pundits like Morton Kondracke and Linda Chavez outdid themselves inventing "disturbing contradictions" in his statements, raising questions about his motives and avoiding the merits of his arguments. "Remember -- the pursuit of facts plays almost no role in our devolving pundit culture," writes Bob Somerby."What does your pundit corps try to get right? They try to get their scripted spins right."

"Several decades into the era of consumer capitalism, the whiz kids on Madison Avenue have learned fairly well how to attach psychic puppet strings to our minds, but they have never really known why (or often whether) their tricks worked," writes Matthew Blakeslee. "Enter the age of neuroscience. As investigators plumb ever deeper into the strange dynamics of the brain, they are shedding new light on many domains of human behavior, including mental illness, violence, cooperation, addiction, eating and even aesthetics. ... The lines between manipulation, free choice and manufactured vs.

"Pick up The Wall Street Journal today, and the business pages are full of stories about the men and women who built the stock market bubble," writes business journalist Philip Longman. "But there's another sector of the economy, deeply implicated in the collapse, whose conflicts of interest, ethical lapses and naive enthusiasms have so far received little press attention: business journalism itself." Longman examines the conflicts of interest and delusions that led journalists to hype the stock market bubble.