More on the MSM's Apologia in the New Yorker

Football Fans and Beyond has Lexis/Nexis, and they're just crazy enough to use it.

Regarding the Chicago Tribune's coverage of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, versus its coverage of the ginned-up "Bush AWOL" story:

Here is the Tribune's complete substantive treatment of the allegations of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004. On May 5, 2004, Stephen Braun wrote of the criticisms leveled by the group. There was not another mention for 3 months. On August 6, 2004, Jill Zuckman and Jeff Zeleny wrote a blurb on the 527. It was entitled "McCain denounces Vietnam vets' anti-Kerry ad; Commercial says Democrat lied about combat role."

The Tribune did not run another substantive article on the charges of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth for the entire campaign....

Perhaps the paper deemed the story all in the past, choosing instead to focus on the future, as opposed to the Vietnam-era actions of the two candidates.

Not quite.

In 2004, The Tribune ran substantive stories on Bush and his National Guard service... [numerous citations of Tribute stories on this "issue" deleted]

By mid-September, the forged CBS documents took over the discussion and somehat muted The Tribune's full-court press on the story. Still, the Tribune's fascination with the president's Guard service was not entirely diluted: [more citations deleted].

Lemann isn't interested in such a factual analysis. Instead, his piece relies on the "gee wiz" viewpoint of the mainstream media. The piece is advertising cloaked as inquiry, where the poor, professional, unbiased reporter is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't by the unreasonable readers who have been captured by Reed Irvine, the blogs and FOX News (Lemann finds examples of conservative reader complaints deemed "paranoid," "wacky," "beyond any evil imagining," and "bewildering" by his mainstream media interviewees).

Read the whole thing.

Instead of examining fully documentable and proveable instances of media bias, Lehman chooses to cite examples of photographs of Arabs with their soles turned towards Bush.