One of our local radio hosts made an interesting observation recently, and after thinking about it, I realized it makes an almost perfect teaching analogy. On the Fourth of July this year (2006), we experienced pretty intense thundershowers across the Front Range. At my location, our band concert and fireworks were delayed and our decent-sized crowd of people was evacuated inside the city hall while one of the storms passed. Several miles away, one of my coworkers received a cold shower during the Colorado Rockies baseball game, and waited out a 90-minute rain delay. Needless to say, the metro area was well soaked on this particular holiday. However, the official weather report indicated only 0.18 inches of rain had fallen! Why, asked the host. From a meteorologist came the answer – though torrents of rain had fallen on many places, very little rain fell at Denver International Airport, where the official measuring equipment is located. Out of that comes the analogy… This is how I think the “mainstream” media works. Take, for example, the war in Iraq. For over three years, American and other countries’ troops have been there toppling a murderous dictatorship, freeing a people, enabling a democratically elected government to form, and rebuilding the country’s infrastructure. But, when you sit in front of the television and get your news from the networks (formerly Rather-Jennings-Brokaw, now Couric-Gibson-Williams) and the Sunday morning shows, just what news do you get? Attacks, IED explosions, 2500 dead soldiers, Democratic senators and congressmen belittling the President and calling the whole thing a quagmire, another Vietnam. When you step away from the networks and go elsewhere, to the Internet, to the blogosphere, to talk radio, you learn of the multiple elections that have taken place, and the schools, hospitals, roads and bridges that have been built and repaired and are operating, and the explosions, not of bombs, but of commerce that are taking place throughout the country. You still hear about the violence and the IEDs, but they are in context – not every Iraqi is trying to kill someone, and attacks are not happening everywhere in the country. And, you get the stories from the people who experienced them – the troops who were in the field, not a bunch of reporters who were in hotel rooms most all the time. “But you can’t listen to talk radio and the bloggers, they’re not professionals!”, the lefties at the networks and newspapers say. Yep, a couple of inches of rain dumped on our heads the other night, but because it wasn’t picked up by the rain gauge at DIA, I guess it just didn’t happen!