John Ziegler made a documentary about sensationalist and biased media coverage of Sarah Palin’s candidacy in Media Malpractice, which John continues to screen across the country, so it should come as no surprise that John has an opinion of the media coverage of the Balloon Boy story. Initially I disagreed with John, and twisted his arm into letting me film his argument. By the end, I agreed with his assessment that the scope and tone of the coverage far outstripped the media’s efforts to get the facts, and that everyone got sucked into the sensational nature of the possible story — which turned out to be much different in the end than we initially thought.

As always, John is a bit shy and withdrawn, but manages to come out of his shell a bit:

Just out of camera range is Newsmax reporter James Hirsen, who disagreed with John, and said that Neil Cavuto’s e-mails are the new editorial standard, for better or worse. All of us agreed that whether the initial story was legitimate or not, the massive use of public resources to track down the empty balloon makes the aftermath a legitimate news story now.