Follow this link to the CBS Nightly News report Earmarks: Who Brought Home the Bacon.

Not to be judgmental or anything, but this is the usual cheap shot, lazy journalism that one can expect from professional journalists.

I call it lazy journalism because the report is based on nothing more than the Pig Book released by Citizens Against Government Waste. In other words CBS is just repeating what someone else said without any fact checking by CBS.

Here is the comment I made on their web site about this story:

You should be more careful with the words you use in your reports.

whopping 9,100 pork barrel projects

How do you decide 9,100 projects is a whopping number? What would be an acceptable number?

How do you know that these projects are pork barrel?

Do you think that potato pest management and research might be of huge economic importance to a state with a large number of potato farmers? Why would you consider that pork barrel?

What is wrong with study mosquito trapping in Florida? It’s not like Florida doesn’t have any mosquito problems and that mosquitoes don’t cause disease and death.

Do you know what the scientific justification for catfish genome mapping is? If not, how do you know it is pork barrel.

You state that there is $16.5 billion in 2010 spent on these projects. You also state that Despite a deficit that’s pushing $1.5 trillion

These projects represent slightly more than 1% of the deficit. Was it worth spending the broadcast time and trying to incite your audience over 1% of the deficit, not even the budget, over projects that may or may not have significant merit?

Does anyone have a sense of proportion anymore? Are there responsible journalists anymore? Or is it it journalism’s duty to ridicule politicians because you have made them an easy target?