First off sorry about the verrrrry long lapse in postings. As I recently explained to a follower of Get Real, the whole point of this blog was not just to spout off but to bring facts to bear on the issues and arguments we often are drowning in. That means it can take a few hours to write each post and frankly, I haven’t had the time lately. I gotta make a living and running a media production company is more than a full-time job. (Obvious plug opportunity: Please visit us at dedappermedia.com and check out our new service at vidlab101.com). But then the news bug bites so hard I can’t resist. So for this fleeting moment I am back.

This whole “debate” about the Islamic center in Lower Manhattan had me recalling (not so fondly) what has become an annual rite of August. In my business August was always a slow news month in which producers yearned for a big story to rescue them from their torpor. At some point though news producers stopped waiting and hoping and began acting. We’ll find a dead horse and beat it.

Who can forget the summer of 2001 when Chandra Levy dominated the news — and not just cable news? Her story was a mainstay of the nightly network newscasts and even received significant coverage in the New York Times and Washington Post (where it was, at least, arguably a local story). Then there was the summer of 2003. The swiftboating of John Kerry was that August’s main course lead by Fox News but then picked up by everyone else. Last summer was all about the death panels coccooned deep within the heath care reform bill. And now we have the “Ground Zero Mosque.”

What’s become increasingly apparent with each passing August is that cable news networks should no longer be referred to as “news” networks. News used to mean a measured reporting of facts — because once upon a time back in the Age of Reason western civilization recognized that facts actually mattered. No more.

Now instead of having journalists go dig and interview and report, minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day is filled with “experts” — a term now loosely applied to anyone who is reasonably telegenic, able to spit out invective on cue, and lacking any doubt in his or her righteousness. So rather than having journalists uncover the fact that Congressman Gary Condit apparently did NOT kill Chandra Levy, or that the Swift Boat ads were wholly untrue, or that there was no provision to off grandma in the health care bill, or that the “Ground Zero Mosque” is neither at ground zero nor a mosque, the cable “news” networks simple repeat lies as often as necessary to fill their vast voids of time.

Calling Fox or MSNBC a “news” network is about as accurate as calling whole grain Pringles (check ‘em out!) a health food. Any resemblance to the real thing is pure fantasy.

Further, this particular story is an especially egregious example of how partisan political narrative is hijacking just about everything in this country. Start wit the obvious FACTS:

1. It is not a mosque — it is an Islamic Center. See no difference? I guess you think a Catholic school is a church then.

2. It’s not at Ground Zero — it is two blocks away. For those of you unfamiliar with Lower Manhattan two blocks can be a different neighborhood entirely. For instance there’s a dirty sex club two blocks from Ground Zero.

3. Islam did not bring down the World Trade Center or fly a plane into the Pentagon. Terrorists did. Yes, they were Muslim but so what? Timothy McVeigh was a terrorist who happened to be Christian. Should we ban any Christian church from anywhere near the Oklahoma City bombing site? (Full disclosure: I am a family member of a OKC victim.) Or maybe since James Knopp killed Dr. Bernard Slepian in a fit of rage motivated by Knopp’s radical Christian beliefs any Christian church proposed for construction around Buffalo should be prevented. Let’s be honest about this: Opposition using this argument is quite simply anti-Muslim. I’m guessing hypersensitive Catholic Bill O’Reilly might devote a segment or two to me as an anti-Christian zealot if I opposed a church in Oklahoma City.

4. Who cares if “the families” don’t want it built? Seriously.

This is where we tread on delicate soil. From the start the families of victims have been given a lot of deference at every stage of the recovery, design and rebuilding processes. And for good reason. Their pain is by definition more acute than those of us who were there, or watched on TV. But they aren’t a “they.” I covered lots of stories with family angles while working at WNBC for a eight years after 9/11 and I’ve talked to a lot of family members. A couple of things you should know.

First, the ones who talk on camera and to reporters may represent the sentiments of some faction of families but not all. Second, many of those who put themselves out front have political motives (“It was Clinton’s fault! It was Bush’s fault! Giuliani is a hero! Giuliani is a goat!). Third the vast majority of the people who lost relatives do not speak to reporters and have not been polled in any real sense. They have moved on. Finally think about how many family members there are.

About 2800 people died in the towers and on the two planes that brought them down. If each victim had an average of three direct family members that’s almost 9000 family members right there. But add in the in-laws, parents, grandchildren who are sometimes speak to the media as family members and you’ve got tens of thousands of people who might legitimately be called family members of the victims. They are not a bloc. They do not share a single common goal or belief structure. I imagine if you could poll them you’d find a pretty similar pattern of belief about any given issue as you would the general population of the tri-state area.

So why should all of these peoples’ opinions be more important than those of, say, the tens of thousands of workers who have to walk through, around, or past Ground Zero every business day? Or the residents of Tribeca, Lower Manhattan and Battery Park City? The crutch of finding one or two people who lost a loved one on 9/11 who happen to share the ideological bent of the storyline as presented by Fox or MS is really old and dishonest. But honesty, like facts, have largely vanished from the cable “news” world.

Recently I was talking to someone about these networks and the idea that what is presented is not in any way, shape or form news. He, like many others outside the business, didn’t recognize that neither Fox nor MSNBC air actual reports any more. Television news was once the place where journalists went to locations to find facts, interview people with local expertise, and then write a report that helped viewers better understand a piece of their world through narrative. No longer. Not on cable.

Now reporters — when they appear at all — pop up in front of a camera to talk. Maybe you’ll get some video or a sound bite but not a carefully reported and crafted report that is the product of experience, time and effort. Not on your life. That costs money. Sending out a reporter, photographer and producer in order to create a 2 or 3 minute taped piece long ago was left to the nightly network shows. Cable won’t spend that kind of money. Sticking people in front of cameras and then sparking an argument fills far more time far more cheaply. That facts are not a part of most of these “discussions” doesn’t seem to bother the bosses or the relatively small audiences that tune in to Fox or MS all day long.

(Yes, they are small. Ratings are all relative so when you hear about Fox winning big it still means they have fewer than a million people watching at any given hour during the daytime. Prime time is a bit different but the biggest show still only gets about 3 million on a good night. Low-rated teen dramadies on the CW do better.)

I left out CNN only because with their huge staff of journalists around the world along with international channels the network does try and work in actual stories during the day. Not as many as they used to and the producers there love a chat fest as much as their competitors but at least CNN still sort of tries. Nonetheless the “mosque” story has been covered ad naseum at CNN as well and without much more regard for facts.

And so here we are with the Fourth Estate that our Founders saw as a critical watchdog against tyranny, instead being as venal and petty as the politicians they seek to demonize. Cravenly serving up whatever mindless nonsense that will draw in a few hundred thousand retirees with free time on their hands.

We deserve better. But until we demand it, we get what we pay for: August bullshit.