I couldn’t help but notice that President Obama chided the American media—the journalism end of it anyway—twice in Thursday’s speech on how a democracy deals with terrorists. As a guy—our first Crackberry president—who clearly understands both pop technology and pop culture, he could be forgiven if the intent of those references was interpreted as him saying, "Is it really too much to expect you guys to do your job?"

By pure coincidence, Dick Cheney was across town pretty much refuting every point Obama was making, reminding his audience never to stop being motivated by fear and expediency. If ever there was a stark, nearly simultaneous point-counter-point on the modern media dilemma of telling the public what it needs to know as opposed to telling it what it wants to hear, this was it.

Obama getting all high-minded about moral stature and how wise democracies respect morality as a vital commodity in pulling together allies in difficult situations versus mashing the nuance-free fear button over and over again, evoking one of the most reliable, atavistic responses in human nature . . . probably even more reliable than sex.

I was in the car most of the afternoon, which prevented me from wasting hours spiking my blood pressure watching the cable news response to the two speeches. But it was bad enough with NPR's Talk of the Nation, which, face it, on America's interstates is the only oasis for . . . information you need to know.

In NPR's defense, this particular show, hosted by Lynn Neary, filling in for Neal Conan, was one of those "instant reaction" things, with a couple reporters reacting to calls from around the country. The calls, no doubt screened for "balance," were pretty predictable. There was a call "inspired" by Obama's logic and respect for a high moral standard, no matter how unpleasant the circumstances.

Then came a call from Oklahoma, home state of Sen. Tom Coburn, the guy who tacked that hyper-cynical, loaded-guns-in-national-parks bill onto the credit card reform act. (And let's not forget all the climate change-denying caterwauling from his startlingly clueless fellow Sen. "the, um 'right honorable' James Inhofe. WHAT is in the water down there?) This caller expressed pride in Cheney for "keeping us safe since 9/11" and "not turning us into the French."

The NPR team responded to these and a few more with stoic, dispassionate reserve, carefully avoiding correcting any misconceptions or inserting any context that might in any way be construed as partisan. Needless to say, this meant no mention of the obvious fact that 9/11 happened on Cheney's watch and that neither he nor his alleged superior, George W. Bush, did anything after being warned a month prior to 9/11 that Osama bin Laden was determined to strike within America's borders. (The classic line there, of course, was Bush's waving off the report's messenger with a cavalier, "Now you've covered your ass.")

Obama's first reference to journalism's failure was directed at the communal collapse of professional skepticism prior amid the fear and stoked-up patriotism earlier this decade. The failure there, to American journalism's everlasting discredit, was cowering out of . . . fear . . . that it would be perceived as "unpatriotic," a thoroughly untenable commercial position.

He said, "I also believe that—too often—our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, we too often set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford. And in this season of fear, too many of us—Democrats and Republicans; politicians, journalists, and citizens—fell silent."

Obama's second reference was in the context of partisan point-scoring, which is currently goosing the outbreak of mass psychosis over—to hear the usual cable and radio suspects tell it—the wholesale release of turbaned, fanged, blood-sucking Muslim maniacs into our leafy suburbs and preschools.

Said Obama, "I understand that it is no secret that there is a tendency in Washington to spend our time pointing fingers at one another. And our media culture feeds the impulses that lead to a good fight. Nothing will contribute more to that than an extended re-litigation of the last eight years."

Now, Obama is a hip enough guy to "get" the straight profit calculations in those usual suspects revving up the fear machines over releasing terrorists. I mean, selling fear is what that crowd does—whether fear is packaged as illegal immigrants, black kids in saggy pants, tax and spend liberals, pushy women, Hollywood do-gooders, or . . . well, the French.

Fear is a reliable seller, and these guys have it down to a sick science.

That end of the media is a shameless game, whereas the "serious" people—big city newspapers, the major TV networks—have generally been regarded as having a commitment to something higher and better, something, you know, other than raw self-preservation and shareholder prosperity.

Obviously, that stopped being the case awhile back, about the time profit margins at your average newspaper and TV affiliate dropped below 30 percent a year and investors realized their leverage schemes were exploding in their faces.

In response to Obama's speech —and his personal popularity—I expect we'll be hearing more in coming days from the so-called "serious media" deconstructing the paranoid fantasies rampant elsewhere in the pop media—NPR had a piece today, Friday, explaining the extreme unlikelihood of any genuine Gitmo terrorist spreading jihad from the subterranean SuperMax prison at Florence, Colorado.

But the greater issue is letting flagrant "untruths" and "misstatements" (also known as "lies"), such as Cheney spewed in his speech to the American Enterprise Institute, play even for an hour in the light of day. In the digital age, with so much corroborative (or debunking) information available at the speed of Google and Nexis, why go on the air or print anything without inserting qualifiers about what so plainly smacks as false and misleading?

The answer, even in NPR's case, is, of course, the issue of commercial caution. To assert as often as you'd have to assert in the case of Dick Cheney that what he was saying was not accurate, valid, or correct under even the most generous interpretations would mean to risk sounding like . . . a liberal partisan.

Routinely exploiting this fear-based Catch-22 in professional journalists has been a fundamental tactic of the modern conservative movement. Namely, say whatever you need to say, to tell the people what they want to hear, and IF confronted with contradictory information, dismiss it as liberal quackery or the product of liberal bias.

The target "base" loves it the first time they hear it, and they love it even more when The New York Times, or NPR, gets around to demurely reporting that almost none of it is true.

Finally, there is the not insignificant issue of mainstream journalism's struggle dealing with "high-mindedness." Obama is asking his audience—us—to stop and engage our educated, adult intellects in the substantial matter of maintaining a moral standing. For journalism, this requires actively discussing what in hell he is talking about. But in a media culture largely devoted to saleable inanity—what the customers want to hear—talk of "morality" is something left almost entirely to the likes of NPR and the wonky fringe . . . if they decide to go there.