When I said the result of the media's lack of critical analysis leading up to the war in Iraq resulted in mainly jingoistic stories, I meant that, largely, the stories the media did publish supported the war in one way or another, either through benign neglect of the facts (there were no WMD), through breathless reports from "embeds" on the rush of combat (embeds: I give the DoD an A+ in marketing for that policy); or through outright advocacy in the guise of journalism. It all added up to one big beat of the war drum.

Also, I still think the satire that started the thread was propaganda. It didn't simply send up bad reporting. The Daily Show does that nearly every night through satire, and they skewer any and all media, not just Fox, with no agenda other than anti-ignorance. The joke was propaganda because it was pushing a very familiar neocon criticism of the sort that gets caught in my spam filter on a daily basis: the media is biased, left leaning, and possibly Francophone. Freedom fries anyone?