Michael Cooper writing in today's NYT ("Facts Take a Beating In Acceptance Speeches"):

Representative Paul D. Ryan used his convention speech on Wednesday to fault President Obama for failing to act on a deficit-reduction plan that he himself had helped kill. He chided Democrats for seeking $716 billion in Medicare cuts that he too had sought. And he lamented the nation’s credit rating—which was downgraded after a debt-ceiling standoff that he and other House Republicans helped instigate. And Mitt Romney, in his acceptance speech on Thursday night, asserted that President Obama’s policies had “not helped create jobs” and that Mr. Obama had gone on an “apology tour” for America. He also warned that the president’s Medicare cuts would “hurt today’s seniors,” claims that have already been labeled false or misleading.... Any unmasking of the lies or distortions, the thinking goes, rarely seeps into the public consciousness.

Alessandra Stanley writing in today's NYT ("How MSNBC Became Fox’s Liberal Evil Twin"):

You can agree with everything that Rachel Maddow or Ed Schultz say on MSNBC and still oppose their right to say it. Especially when they and their hyped-up panelists shout that Republican claims are “lies."

Gee, why don't efforts to unmask the lies "seep into the public consciousness"? Maybe because newspaper reporters and television news anchors are too inhibited or too compromised or too terrified to call lies lies. Instead of telling us the truth in plain English—you're being lied to—they tell us that facts took beatings, that "factual shortcuts" were taken, that a statement may have been "factually challenged." They make it sound like facts did something wrong. (Facts are such pussies—why do they just stand there and take beatings like that? Why don't facts fight back? Pussy facts!)

Here's what happened at the RNC: lies were told, over and over and over again, by nearly every idiot who stood at the podium. And the same reporters and anchors who refuse to point out the lies and call out the liars—the same reporters and anchors who refuse to do their jobs—wonder why their pathetic, cringing, tortured, opaque, failing, flailing, euphemism-packed efforts to "unmask" lies without ever calling them lies never quite "seeps into the public consciousness."

And when a reporter or an anchor actually has the temerity/balls/ovaries calls a lie a lie—when a reporter does his or her job—Alessandra Stanley is there to scold them.