I wrote this email to the ombudsman of the Boston Globe, who had written a column defending the media's sitting on the Kerry mistress rumor/story:
First, I have no particular beef with the way the way the media are handling the Kerry 'whatsit'. While I suspect the rumors are true, and the media are holding back from digging as hard as they could, I don't much care who a politician sleeps with, as long as she was over 21 and willing. It's the kind of thing I am happy to keep under the rug. So I agreed with your column perfectly well today until I got to the paragraph,
Neither, critics might respond, has reporting on Bush's military service turned up proof of wrongdoing. True, but the reporting has revealed that military records don't reflect what Bush maintains is true -- that he kept up his required National Guard duty in Alabama. That is a fact and worth reporting, just as the Globe in 1992 aggressively reported on Bill Clinton's draft records
Whoops, time-out! Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that it was a fact worth repeating in 2000, when the Globe first repeated it? Why is the National Guard story news again this year? Why isn't it old news? George Bush has been President for over three years already! Was Bill Clinton's draft-dodging still a story in 1996, or were newspapers more interested by then in reporting his actions as President, as is normal when incumbents run for re-election?
But then I remember that Bob Dole was not running as a war hero, though he certainly could have.
I could also mention that the media have done slightly more that just "repeat" the lack of corroborating National Guard service records. You have access to Lexis-Nexus, why don't you tell your readers how many Boston Globe, New York Times, and Washington Post stories have focused on exactly when, how, and where Bush did, or did not, show up for his National Guard drills in 1972? These papers have been pounding on the story for weeks.
No, it is not the handling of the Kerry story that has my 'bias' antennae up. It's the contrast between the kid-glove handling of the Kerry story, combined with the relentless pounding on an equally trivial Bush story. Given that, it really stretches credulity to ask me to believe that the press would be equally restrained were it Bush's purported mistress who was hiding out in Nairobi. |
