Sound of Crickets Chirping

[billroper]

This column by Larry Simoneaux (who I know nothing about other than what I just read in the linked-to column) does a fine job of encapsulating my feelings about the utter silence from the mainstream press in trying to determine what's the truth of the situation with John Kerry and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

I've watched stories on the Internet for the past week since I first heard about Senator Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia" on Fox News Channel. That's the only place I can get any information, because none of the mainstream press that should be interested in getting to the truth has reported on it at all that I can find. Just to pick on my hometown papers, the Chicago Tribune hasn't mentioned it at all in their news pages. The Chicago Sun-Times has referenced it twice on the editorial page, here and here. But I'm not really interested in editorializing on the subject. What I want are facts.

I can find blogs like Captain's Quarters which have assembled an impressive recitation of what they say are the facts. But are they telling the truth?

I don't know that. But I'd like to believe that the mainstream press would pursue this story with the same kind of dogged persistence that they've chased after President Bush's National Guard Service Records.

Because I'd like to know the truth.

I really would.

Comments

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

The only thing I'll say here is that the fact that the press has run with the story of Bush's national guard records much more than the story about Kerry's service in Cambodia has a lot to do not with party affiliation but with the fact that Bush is the incumbent. Bush's national guard service was brought up in the 2000 election cycle and nobody paid any attention to it. Some people seem to be much more interested in dirt about the sitting President than any other kind of dirt, as evidenced by how much time the country spent digging for skeletons in Clinton's closet.

[billroper]

I recall there being a fair amount of hue and cry about it.

Here's a CNN article from May 2000. Here are articles quoted from the Boston Globe of the same vintage.

Of course, these articles are four years old and a lot of them will have fallen off of Google. I could probably find more with a Lexis-Nexis search, but I don't have access to it.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I don't actually remember it being discussed in 2000 at all. (I don't claim it didn't come up; just that it was not a big enough story for me to have any memory of it 4 years later.) I remember hearing several people saying this year that the story came up in 2000 and died down quickly. This year when the story came up, other media picked it up, and it became a story because it was a story. I think that's because it was about the guy currently in the White House more than because of the content or credibility of the story.