Oprah gets to the bottom of things.

I'm trying to decide my take on this posting. I'm trying to give Oprah credit. She tackled a tough issue on her Oct. 12th showing. Still, when I looked through her site trying to find the archived episode, I had to sift through "Are you wearing the right bra?," "Answers to your embarassing health questions," and "Oprah and Gayle's road trip" before I could find her meatier topic from the week before. Needless to say, I got a bit side-tracked.
My original intent for visiting her site was to look over the notes from her episode in which she interviewed New York Times columnist Frank Rich. During his interview, Oprah grilled him on the media's role in Iraq. Observe a portion of the transcript:

In his book, Frank Rich asks, how did the media play a role in going to war in Iraq?

He responds: I think the media, after 9/11…we're human. Journalists are human. We were shocked and horrified and we rallied around our president. Ninety percent of the country supported the president after 9/11, and we had a human reaction. … Then it's 2002, into 2002, when they started rolling out this evidence of supposed weapons of mass destruction. We should have been more skeptical. It lasted too long for the media. …

Oprah: You say ironically that it was The Daily Show, Jon Stewart's fake news program on Comedy Central, that really consistently asked the tough questions. … So what does that tell us?

Frank: … I think people somehow knew they were being handed a line and were desperate to find some source of truth even if it came in the form of jokes and comedy, which it did.

So here's the deal. The war in Iraq. Fair and balanced coverage. The preference for comedic news. I give Oprah credit for highlighting some major media issues that are prevalent and need to be brought out to the open forum -- even if this open forum is just as content discussing bra fits and embarassing health matters just days later. But can one episode successfully tackle this massive media issues?