From Salon.com, by Eric Boehlert:
"Monday saw the long-awaited verdict for "60 Minutes Wednesday" and its famous on-air star Dan Rather, who was part of the airing of a poorly sourced report about President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. Then on Wednesday came word that the exhaustive search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had come to an official and quiet close, without any proof to support Bush's claim of an ominous stockpile. Both reports painted unpleasant portraits of the central parties involved and raised serious questions about their professional judgment. Which one garnered more press coverage? The one about the guy who reads the news on TV."
"The Times' restraint certainly undercuts a wider accusation, which surrounds the CBS debacle, that the mainstream media has a liberal bias and is out to get the Bush White House. "You could make the argument that the Times leans to the left," says Royhab in Toledo. "And you would think they might put [the WMD story] on Page 1 as a major administration failure."
Instead the Times, like so many others this week, chose to dwell on the scandal story about a newsroom, not the war room."
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