I think you're confusing my description of a "consensus opinion" with a "plan" or "agenda." Sure, there's orchestration and an attempt at manipulation with varying degrees of success (my favorite books on the subject are The Hunting of the President and The Mighty Wurlitzer). But the manipulation is just one factor in shaping the broad scatterplot of narrative that may be wide, may be narrow, may be right, may be wrong, but is most assuredly centered around a commonality.

The Bush administration worked real hard to sell the idea of WMDs in Iraq. All sorts of talented journalists worked real hard to dispel the idea of WMDs in Iraq. There was no shortage of opinions on either side, and even with Colin Powell standing up in Congress the logic of the narrative tended to support "no WMDs." But the consensus opinion became "WMDs in Iraq" because that's the way the herd went. Were there cowboys? Sure. Were there rogue doggies? Sure. But the bulk of the information available was "WMDs in Iraq."

So no. Not orchestrated. not planned. But at the end of the day, there are more people saying one thing than saying the other thing, and a lot of that is because nobody cares quite so much about what journalists think and say than other journalists. If you're wrong when everyone else is wrong you walk it off. If you're right while everyone else is wrong you die.

In short, find reliable writers. Follow them wherever they post from, no matter which media outlet is putting out their stories.

So we're back to this: yeah, if you set an RSS feed to ping you whenever Greg Palast says stuff, you'll get a Palastful feed of news. But if you open a paper, you'll see something else entirely different.

And it doesn't really matter which paper, either.

THAT is a consensus opinion.