Monday on NPR's "On the Media", a White House correspondent explained that not only has Bush been giving regular press conferences - about once a month - since the defeat of the Republican party in 2006, but he has been giving the reporters as much as a day's notice. Previously, they would give as little as 45 minutes notice, and many reporters would not be able to get to the briefing in time.
This correspondent explained that before the 2006 elections, Bush simply saw no need for the mainstream media, no need for the White House press corps. He could bypass them and go directly to his main, conservative base through a system of networking e-mails.
I'm not surprised at this, and I think I heard something that there was something of a setup like this to disseminate information to conservatives, but I hadn't realized how thorough it must have been that they could go around the mainstream media entirely.
But now we know how this country has become so polarized. It's easy when we live in an age when we are not all getting the same story. Liberal and conservatives alike get our news filtered according to our political preferences.
And the gap between us grows larger each day.
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