Denial can be a winning strategy

I don't expect old media to admit that "60 Minutes" screwed up. They, like "60 Minutes" and CBS have a vested interest in maintaining MSM's monopoly in the "explanation space."

As Hemingway wrote, "hawks do not share."

You can call that denial, but it is also a problem for bloggers trying to get the truth out. Too many of us are waiting for that Perry Mason moment when Dan Rather shouts "OK they're fake, but Bush must be defeated."

What if that never happens?

Denial is actually a pretty good tactic for the MSM. A defeat is not decisive unless the loser wants it to be. (A point made by Professor Colin Gray in this paper.) As i noted here, "German doctrine and strategy in 1941-42 failed because Stalin, unlike the French, refused to accept that crushing operational defeats were strategically decisive." Or as Gray wrote: "In words attributed to Mao Tse-tung: There is in guerrilla warfare no such thing as a decisive battle."

Belmont Club looks at the question with a tactical analogy