John Kerry

A common complaint of most media watchers is that investigative journalism, despite the tools available in today's Internet Era, has become a lost art.Take for example the media's fawning over Barack Obama's speech on Tuesday, with many of the usual suspects calling it "extraordinary," "worthy of Abraham Lincoln," "the best speech ever given on race in this country," and a "definining cultural…

On Monday’s CBS "Early Show," co-host Harry Smith did a segment on the effectiveness of television ads in presidential campaigns, in which he gave credit to Ronald Reagan’s ‘optimistic’ "Morning in America" ad, which he incorrectly said was run in the 1980 campaign rather than 1984, but he followed quickly by condemning more recent Republican ads: "There's a high road and a low road. Remember…

Earlier, I noted how the New York Times barely touched on adultery rumors about John Kerry four years ago, and how the morning shows lurched into McCain-in-crisis mode at the first shaky Times "romantic relationship" story on Vicki Iseman. The same pattern followed on network TV coverage of the Kerry rumor. It barely surfaced, and never for more than a sentence or two. All three networks heavily…

It now appears, as predicted by yours truly two weeks ago today, that Hillary Clinton will not be our next president, and that Barack Obama is going to be Democratic Party's presidential nominee. This means that it must be time for Old Media to start playing robust defense on his behalf.

A story that mildly resembles today's McCain "scoop" came four years ago, the charge that young AP reporter Alexandra Polier may have had an affair with John Kerry. No proof emerged. How did the New York Times cover that charge? On February 17, 2004, on page A-19, the Times ran a 434-word piece by reporter Jim Rutenberg, one of the four reporters on the McCain story today. The rumor had a "…

Someone should tell Chris Matthews to go pick on someone his own size . . . Matthews enjoyed himself at the expense of a local legislator during last night's MSNBC coverage of the primaries. Kirk Watson [shown in a clip from today's Morning Joe] is a state senator from Texas and an Obama supporter. Matthews cornered Watson at length over his inability to name specific accomplishments by Barack.…

In MSM circles, "swiftboating" is shorthand for false attacks on Democrats, even though John O'Neill and other members of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth stand adamantly behind their allegations about John Kerry's war record.In an interview of Barack Obama conducted yesterday and aired on this morning's Today, Matt Lauer employed the "swiftboating" code to ask whether the candidate is prepared for…

Yesterday, the Obama campaign put out an email from John Kerry condemning the "Swiftboating" of Barack. Today it's Michelle Obama's turn, and the candidate's wife has come out swinging. Here's the text of an email from Michelle Obama just received from the Obama campaign [emphasis added]:Mark -- In the past week or two, another candidate's spouse has been getting an awful lot of attention. We…

With less than a year to go until the November elections, it seems a metaphysical certitude any media outlet addressing the campaign efforts of a Republican candidate is going to figure out a way to reference the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. After all, supposedly impartial press representatives in 2004 did everything within their power to discredit the claims against Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.)…

"CIA tapes destroyed despite court order" blares an Associated Press headline today. But the court order allegedly breached applied to videotapes in possession of the U.S. military of interrogations at Guantanamo Bay, not videos of interrogations held at secret CIA sites in foreign countries.But that's okay, insists AP writer Matt Apuzzo as "Attorneys say that might not matter." But what…