Missing the point.

During the 2000 campaign, the press gave more attention to Gore's exaggerations than to Bush's lies. Will it turn out to have made similar errors of emphasis this time? The CBS scandal does not inspire optimism.

Within a few days after "60 Minutes" broadcast its scoop about George W. Bush's now-and-then service in the National Guard, the story for the rest of the media became almost exclusively not about Bush but about the Failings of CBS, Dan Rather, and his producer Mary Mapes. Evidence that the facts alleged in the story were true was either ignored or buried. Consider the first mention in The Washington Post that Col. Killian's secretary, Marianne Knox, had confirmed that the documents accurately reflected the views of Col. Killian. The Post's Howard Kurtz put this fact in the 12th paragraph of a story, the preceding paragraphs of which had dealt not with whether the story was true, but whether the letters were fake.

Actually, Rather's original story had supplied a long-missing piece of the puzzle about Bush's National Guard service. It had been rumored for years that Ben Barnes, a former lieutenant governor of Texas and longtime political powerhouse in the state, had pulled strings to get Bush into the Guard. Rather now had Barnes on camera confirming for the first time that this was true. If Rather had nothing else, this should have been news. But it was totally ignored or buried in the rest of the media's account of the CBS story. For example, in a long Post story by Kurtz and two of his colleagues that began on page one, Barnes's revelation was not mentioned until the continued portion on page 27 and even then not until the 12th paragraph. On that same page, Marianne Knox's statement "I know Dan Rather is right" does not appear until 40 paragraphs later.

In a more recent Post article by Jennifer Frey about Mary Mapes, CBS' producer of the Guard story, the possibility that Mapes's story is true does not appear until the 35th paragraph. I guess you could call this an improvement. But of course, the point of all this is that far too few in the media seemed to get that the truth of the allegations about Bush were equally as important as the authenticity of the documents. The Post's Anne Applebaum argues that the two issues are inseparable. She's wrong. One story is about CBS, the other about Bush. Bald it is that story that the Post and most of the rest of the media blew.