OxBlog

# Posted 10:51 PM by Ariel David Adesnik

THE FEEDING FRENZY HAS BEGUN: This NYT article gives way too much attention and credibility to cheapshots that Republicans have begun to take at Kerry. While Kerry's defenders get a few good shots in themselves, you've got to scroll down a ways to see what they say. But that is the price of being #1. And while the Times' editors are hoping that John Edwards will do their mud-slinging for them, the fact is that the media will play the lead role in picking Kerry apart.

Now, one particularly disturbing aspect of the NYT article is that it focuses on partisan slurs while ignoring substantive criticisms of Kerry's record. If the RNC can get top billing by calling Kerry an extremist, it doesn't exactly promote serious debate. But it's not as if the Times is letting Bush off the hook. Also in today's paper, the Times reviews the military service issue, which never plays well for Bush.

The basic message of the article is Kerry=hero, Bush=lazy rich boy. That's not exactly wrong, but one might easily say that a balanced article on the subject would point out that war hero John Kerry couldn't make up his mind about whether to support either Gulf War. Also of the note, the NYT reports Democratic accusations that Bush went AWOL but doesn't really say whether there is any merit to the charge. As the Daily Howler point outs in a very comprehensive post, neither the NYT nor the WaPo nor the Boston Globe has ever presented the facts of the case very clearly. Finally, a Campaign Desk investigation shows that all of the recent attention given to the AWOL issue resulted not from Michael Moore's charge that Bush was a "deserter", but from Peter Jennings' interrogation of Clark regarding Moore's charge at the recent South Carolina debate. I wonder how much we'd have to pay Jennings to mention OxBlog...

UPDATE: Phil Carter points out a number of ways in which enterprising journalists might confirm or disconfirm the AWOL charge.

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