Why should anyone hope that "the media won't look like idiots"? (Apart from the people with executive responsibility in the relevant media perhaps.) Don't most people just love it when the all-knowing pundits get egg on their face?
..........................

"travesty of a mockery of a sham " Can't agree, kat. It's surely just a way of emphasising the point by using a run of linked (near) synomyms.   A figure of speech - I'm sure there's an impressive academic term for it. It could have been "a travesty, a mockery and a sham", which wouldn't have strained the syntax, but I think linking with an "of" instead of "an" somehow seems (for me) to improve the rhythm, and doesn't confuse the sense.