WHO TOLD MARSHALL WHAT RATHER WAS RUNNING?:

The Camera Blinks: A nation of fact-checkers, a network in denial. (BYRON YORK, September 17, 2004, Wall Street Journal)

For days leading up to the "60 Minutes" broadcast, CBS teased the public with word that Ben Barnes, the former speaker of the Texas House, would tell Mr. Rather on camera that he, Mr. Barnes, had pulled strings to get young George W. Bush a place in the Air National Guard. Then, shortly before the program aired, there were rumors the story might contain much more than that.

"The big news won't be how Bush got into the Guard but how he blew off his duties once he got there," the liberal blogger Joshua Micah Marshall, citing "several sources," wrote the day before the broadcast. "New documents--stuff that is clear and straightforward and apparently puts beyond any debate or doubt that the now-President blew off his duties that he said, as recently as this year, that he fulfilled."

It's that symbiosis between CBS, Democratic operatives and partisan political writers, like Mr. Marshall, that's most troubling. If CBS wants to be the house network of the DNC let them at least be forthright about it. We'd be better served anyway by an openly partisan press than by the canard of an objective major media.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 17, 2004 10:25 AM