CNN.com is now featuring its long-winded, self-congratulatory response to Michael Moore’s scathing letter to the media giant for its initial reporting on his latest movie, Sicko.

Protesting the unfairness of Mr. Moore’s detailed criticism, the CNN.com defensiveness has this declaration in the preamble to its supposedly point-by-point ramble: “We have zero vested interest in shading the numbers to tell a certain story,” a claim rather amazing on its face, given the corporation’s complete dependence on advertising dollars from other corporations that know how to use the power of that money to shape news, and given CNN’s long-standing dependence upon the Bush Administration’s discriminating willingness to grant or deny access to the halls of administrative power in Washington.

But the kicker comes in the sixth paragraph, where we learn, “CNN has always prided itself on balanced reporting of claims made by special-interest groups.”

At the bottom of the article, CNN.com offered a feedback link, which takes the reader to a screen where, along with survey-type features, a person can write a comment, restricted to no more than 500 characters; that is apparently, in the judgment of CNN.com, sufficient latitude for anyone to have a well-formed, substantive say.

I used my 500 characters to the end of getting a few broad points across, and I herewith share with the public that which I just finished roaring at CNN.com:

While I am not a fan of Michael Moore when he holds Cuba up as a positive socio-political model for anything, I am just amazed by the disingenuousness in your claim that, “CNN has always prided itself on balanced reporting of claims made by special-interest groups.”

The very use of the term ‘special interest groups’ serves no purpose other than to degrade and demean those who have strongly opposed the Bush Administration in its systematic prevarications that led to the American-Iraqi War, a war for which CNN served as nothing other than a propaganda outlet for the neo-conservatives, as Michael Moore pointed out in blistering terms to Wolf Blitzer last week.

And by the way, were those ‘special interest groups’ that pointed out how CNN.com was publishing photos handily provided by the Department of Defense of North Korean ‘nuclear facilities’ that were the same photographs DoD had also claimed were Iranian nuclear facilities?

Perhaps I am a ‘special interest group’; but you are just shills.

The Dark Wraith has thus spoken not Truth to Power, but instead, Hell-Fire and Damnation to Propagandists.