The plants at the last CNN debate are growing like kudzu. It is getting hard to find someone who isn’t a political operative.

CNN has about 48 hours to come clean, apologize, and beg for mercy or we might see an entire network go the way of Dan Rather.

And speaking of corrections and clarifications, look for the Uptown paper of record to backtrack tomorrow on its staggeringly high-handed editorial on the nursing mom who landed in the Mecklenburg County jail on a shoplifting charge. You know, the news story that was corrected today.

Update: Somehow this take from Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi suddenly seems very relevant:

If you have no real knowledge or skill set and you’re lazy and full of sh*t but you want to make a decent wage, then journalism’s not a bad career option. The great thing about it is that you don’t need to know anything. I mean this whole notion of journalism school—I can’t believe people actually go to journalism school. You can learn the entire thing in like three days. My advice is instead of going to journalism school, go to school for something concrete like medicine or some kind of science or something and then use the knowledge you get in that field as a wedge to get yourself into journalism.

What journalism really needs is more people who are reporting who actually know something. Instead of having a bunch of liberal arts grads who’ve read Siddhartha 50 times writing about health care, it would be really nice if some of the people who are writing about health care were doctors.

Better still, check out the reaction Taibbi gets from outraged journos for getting dangerously close to the truth.