RE: Media..Are you their puppet?
I watched ABC's news tonight and they, as I suppose the other networks did, devoted most of their coverage to Gustav. Most of the ABC reporting staff, including the main anchor, was in Louisiana. Having worked in the news media since 1975, I can assure you that when any news organization devotes that many of its resources to an event, most of its coverage is going to concern that story. Unfortunately, due to time constraints for network television or space constraints for newspapers, that means other items have to be left out.
ABC touched on the Sarah Palin story, but in the context of while John McCain said he knew about the daughter's pregnancy, it appeared that his staff didn't, which raised questions about how thorough the vetting process was prior to her selection. Apparently, the local newspapers in Alaska weren't even contacted for their reports on her, which apparently is fairly standard procedure in such cases.
ABC also did a report similar to what they did during the Democratic convention about the lobbying of delegates that's going on during the convention.
There was no mention of the "rioting" in St. Paul on ABC, but having looked at the St. Paul Pioneer-Press web site just now, it didn't sound like that big a deal. There indeed was some violence, broken windows and a bridge was blocked briefly until mounted police broke up the protesters, but it hardly was Chicago '68.