CATCHING UP to something I’ve been reporting for weeks both here and at GlennReynolds.com, the Chicago Tribune reports on the link between talk radio and pro-liberation rallies. (But I’m also giving you the link to Howard Kurtz’s summary because the link to the Trib story produces a registration-required popup that — on my computer at least — sat there for over a minute with nothing happening.) Anyway, here’s the meat:

Some of the biggest rallies this month have endorsed President Bush’s strategy against Saddam Hussein, and the common thread linking most of them is Clear Channel Worldwide Inc., the nation’s largest owner of radio stations.

In a move that has raised eyebrows in some legal and journalistic circles, Clear Channel radio stations in Atlanta, Cleveland, San Antonio, Cincinnati and other cities have sponsored rallies attended by up to 20,000 people. The events have served as a loud rebuttal to the more numerous but generally smaller anti-war rallies.

Well, the “raised eyebrows” don’t have anything to do with illegality since (1) there’s a pretty clear First Amendment right to sponsor rallies; and (2) the story makes clear with a quote from Glen Robinson that there’s nothing illegal here.

At any rate, with Hollywood making “message” films for years, and with television producing “very special episodes” of sitcoms larded with political indoctrination, it seems to me that the far more aboveboard practice of sponsoring rallies constitutes an improvement in business as usual among the entertainment industries. You know, because it’s honest.

That’s more than you can say for this Courtland Milloy column, which constitutes a shocking display of dishonesty-by-omission. Here’s what he says:

Lindsay, a freshman at Howard University, is national student coordinator for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, or ANSWER, an international coalition of antiwar groups. The organization was formed Sept. 14, 2001, to challenge the warmongering and the racial and religious profiling that emerged after 9/11.

Nothing about A.N.S.W.E.R.’s Stalinist connections, nothing about its banning of Michael Lerner or its antisemitism. Just an innocent group of high-minded antiwar activists, that’s all. Milloy’s piece is both over-the-top to the point of self-parody and dishonest, and he should be ashamed. But we won’t read any media-critic stories about raised eyebrows where Milloy’s piece is concerned. Because it may be dishonest, but it’s a well-established form of dishonesty.