September 23, 2004

Missing the Forest and the Trees

Kevin's rant at "mainstream media carpetbaggers" allows me to again remind you of USA Today's role in the Killian memos story. The newspaper ran a story on the fake memos the day after the 60 Minutes II airing. It also has a history of working with Bill Burkett and an obsession with President Bush's National Guard service. CBS News actually had experts look at the documents--they just ignored the conclusions that didn't fit the story they were looking for--USAT had experts examine them days after their first story. To make it worse reporters Dave Moniz and Jim Drinkard continue to report on the story. This gives them the opportunity to focus the story solely on CBS News' mistakes.

So while some newspaper columnists try to give their employers credit for exposing CBS News--nothing would have happened without the webloggers--they continue to miss a lack of self-reflection at one of their own.

[I will give USAT some credit. They got Burkett on the record. They also broke the important Mape-Lockhart story. What the paper hasn't done is apologize to its readers and investigate what went wrong in their newsroom.]

"Mainstream Media Carpetbaggers"