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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2004-08-14

The Press Has Cast Their Ballots

I wanted to let the story sit for a few days. I felt it was necessary to let the dinosaur press have a chance to jump on the hottest internet story going. I wanted to believe the HH guests who predicted that this would hit the mainstream by Thursday. I even thought with an extra day the Denver press might have an extra chance to hook up to an AP or NYTimes story.

So I've been searching the paper with great interest the last two days, and nothing. Nada. I even went to the websites of both the Post and the News and did a search for "Kerry Cambodia" to no avail.

So the obvious conclusion one has to come to is that the press in general and the Denver press in particular has chosen to be complicit in the Kerry campaign's coverup of the Kerry meltdown.

Perhaps they don't see this as a real story, I tell myself. Not likely. The Bush/National Guard story had a much more plausible explanation and his alibi a better corroboration, but nonetheless it got two weeks' headlines. Maybe they're waiting for better evidence than the word of veterans, I say. But that doesn't hold up, either. "Bush lied" was all the rage for a while, even though his conclusion was corroborated by the previous administration, the U.N., the French, the Germans, the Russians, and the Israelis, and Kerry's story is not just untrue--it borders on unlikely.

But what is most laughable is the press' willingness to buy the defense of the Kerry supporters without hunting for the real truth. Their strongest argument, apparently, is that Kerry was awarded the medals for heroism by the Navy, and he was awarded the Purple Hearts by the Navy, so that should be good enough. They, of course, selectively ignore the fact that the President was awarded an Honorable Discharge by the Texas Air National Guard, as if that is somehow not good enough. And the "Band of Brothers"? How many of them are there? Twelve? Compare that number to the total number of swiftboat vets who contributed to "Unfit for Command"--what??hundreds? Or compare that dozen to the total number of swiftboat veterans out there who could speak up for Kerry--thousands! Even their treatment is ludicrous: you can't question the swiftboat veterans FOR Kerry because of their honorable service to the country, but the motives of John O'Neill and the veterans AGAINST Kerry are fair game.

There is a reason that the blogosphere has become the best clearinghouse for information and opinion for anybody slightly to the right of Nancy Pelosi. It's the same reason that newspaper readership is down, advertising dollars are down, and "news"rooms are emptying.

Because the mainstream media has become an active participant in the campaign, and that means it CANNOT be trusted.

UPDATE: Well, one media person is following the story--or, rather, following the media's lack of coverage of the story. That one is Dave Kopel in today's Rocky Mountain News.

Posted by: Michael / 8/14/2004 12:23:00 AM

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