A Swift Boat Kick in the Teeth

How the mainstream media grapple with partisans.

Matt Welch from the November 2004 issue

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Later that day, Roger Simon warned darkly of the escalating battle between the MSM and critics like him: "A war is on, ladies and gentlemen, and as with most semi-normal people involved in a war, I don't feel particularly comfortable in it -- and not, obviously in this case, because I might get shot."

There's a double standard at work here that news organizations are going to have to get used to. Reynolds and Simon (who are both friends of mine) play a different role than The Washington Post. If they want to obsess and huff and hypothesize and accuse, well, they're just guys with Web sites, like drunks in a bar that holds 10,000 comparatively influential people.

Newspapers, on the other hand, sell themselves as giving us the news, and part of that job includes the messy work of separating factual wheat from partisan chaff. Sorting out how (if at all) to emphasize the results is an ever-elusive art, but ignoring all criticism just because some of it is loud and overheated prevents the mainstream media from doing what they are in the unique position of doing best.