Washington Times hypocrisy

Today, the Washington Times ran a syndicated U.S._News_column from John Leo entitled "Making CBS play fair." It's clear the WashTimes still hasn't had enough of "Rathergate." Of course their own columnist, John McCaslin, commited a much more serious breach_of_journalistic_integrity last week.

You see, John McCaslin made a claim, repeated by Fox News and others, that Kerry said in a Crossfire interview that "We know that Iraq is a danger to the United States, and we reserve the right to take pre-emptive action whenever we feel it's in our national interest." His source was Republican Congressman Peter King, who claimed to have a tape of this episode of Crossfire, from 1997, as he was a guest as well. Now you would assume that McCaslin would watch this tape, copy the quote verbatim, and report. Either that or get a transcript, but unfortunately, McCaslin claims, no transcripts were available for shows in 1997.

However, as Media_Matters points out, this is simply untrue. With a simple Nexis search, they were able to show that McCaslin flat-out misquoted Kerry. Kerry never advocated a doctrine of pre-emption. Either McCaslin is grossly incompetent, or he deliberately smeared Kerry, possibly acting in cahoots with a Republican congressman.

Back to Leo's column that appeared in the Washington Times today. Let's see how his statements about CBS might apply to the McCaslin fiasco....

"Why was CBS so determined to broadcast its alleged scoop about George Bush's National Guard service before the story was properly checked out?.... Why didn't CBS just wait a week and do some elementary checking?" Why was the Washington Times in a rush to publish McCaslin's column without getting a Crossfire transcript?

"What CBS produced was the worst press scandal of our era, revealing a depth of ineptitude and arrogance that even the network's worst critics hardly suspected. " Worst press scandal? By coverage, maybe, but don't you think what the WashTimes did was a wee bit more mischievous?

Come on, Washington Times, do the right thing. If you are calling for Dan Rather's head, you better make some changes under your own roof.