Dumb and Dumber (and Dumber Still).

The article discusses the media's coverage of the United States presidential election of 2004 between President George W. Bush and Democratic candidate John Kerry. One problem with trying to write critically about the 2004 presidential election coverage is that by choosing any single aspect of its manifold failures, one automatically does an injustice to the full scope of its immense, almost stupefying awfulness. When the New York Times ran its May 26 admission that it gullibly swallowed the Bush Administration's deception about Iraq's nuclear weapons program, which helped win support for a ruinous war, the story was, according to the invaluable Media Matters, reported thirty-eight times in U.S. newspaper and wire reports during the following forty-eight hours and seven times on cable news. It was entirely ignored on Fox News Channel. By contrast, in the forty-eight hours following CBS's admission that it "should not have used" memos critical of Bush's military service because of questions regarding their provenance, the story was reported 167 times in U.S. newspaper and wire reports and fifty-seven times on cable news broadcasts. Times columnist William Safire has played a powerful role in misinforming the paper's readers about a meeting he alleges took place between Al Qaeda terrorist Mohamed Atta and the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service in Prague, in April 2001. The meeting is, according to all available evidence, entirely made up. CBS's slip-up was such big news because it fit the right-wing script designed to shield the Bush Administration from democratic accountability.