September 30, 2004

Alone in the Wilderness

The Boston Globe almost got caught up in a forgery about the forged Killian memos. A few jobs may have been saved by this Wizbang post.

That's all well and good, but why are the same webloggers who went gung-ho after CBS News letting USA Today off the hook for their role publicizing the memos? For daily TAM readers this is old news. The paper relied on CBS News' "journalism" and the White House's lack of a denial to run with the story a day after the 60 Minutes II airing. Only after the blogosphere and some MSM questioned the memos' authencity did USAT have experts look at the documents. USAT reporters have a history with Bill Burkett and have spent months trying to dig up dirt on President Bush's National Guard service.

Webloggers aren't the only ones missing this angle. USAT's own media reporter, Peter Johnson, wrote about how conservatives think Dan Rather and CBS News lean Left. Not one mention is made that his employer also ran a smear story on Bush based on forged documents.

Not all webloggers following the Killian memo story have ignored TAM's investigation. Thanks must be given to them for publicizing USAT's role.

This isn't about me trying to break a big story. This is about holding media organizations accountable for bad journalism. USAT editor Ken Paulson sees nothing wrong with how his paper covered the story. There's no contrition and no apology to readers and President Bush. You'd think such arrogance would receive heaps of scorn from the blogosphere. Well, there's at least one person is mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

[To read my on-going critque of USAT's Killian memo coverage read here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.]