And to continue on in our Business Week references, this week BW reports that Monsanto, the Frankenfood giant of the West, has gotten help from a sleazy writer to make biotech palatable to the average American.

This follows a story in December in Business Week which revealed that Abramoff paid Op-Ed writers to write columns favorable to his corporate clients.

These articles come as no great surprise but add to the heap of evidence indicating that propaganda continues to outweigh truth-telling in the pool of available information.

And wither the bloggers in all of this? Bloggers may be the hope of the future for journalism, if the majority of them can maintain some ethics. Not being beholden to any special interests is what blogging should be all about. The downside of this, of course, if that it means you are basically writing for free, and are likely to have an audience of about 100 people if you are lucky, because you will not have be earning enough money to invest in marketing to promote your site and make your audience much bigger. Bloggers have taken a few measures to self-sustain, such as Blogads networks that bring some income to those fortunate enough to have millions of page views a week. For the rest of us, blogging remains a hobby, but one that we hope is bringing another lighted candle into a world darkened daily by corporations who abuse their power, and the politicians and journalists who do their bidding.