Kurtz, working as a correspondent for the CNN program News Night with Aaron Brown, delivered a report on the media's approach to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth controversy that deserves reprinting in its entirety:
HOWARD KURTZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Question, how many people would ordinarily have seen this Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad based on a half million dollar buy in just three states? Answer, not many but that was before the media, and especially cable television, began serving as a megaphone for charges about John Kerry's military record without having the slightest idea whether those charges were true. And when the cable circuit began debating whether Kerry deserved his silver star and his bronze star and his three purple hearts in Vietnam, viewers were also left wondering what was true.
JAMES CARVILLE, CNN HOST: Did you meet him in Vietnam?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.
CARVILLE: You mean you never met him in Vietnam?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.
CARVILLE: Come on. You're writing a book on a -- oh, come on, man.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was -- he was only there three months, James.
ROBERT NOVAK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You shout and you yell because you cannot answer the allegations in this book.
KURTZ: Suddenly, it seemed the only issue in the presidential campaign was the war, Vietnam not Iraq.
SEAN HANNITY, CO-HOST, "HANNITY AND COLMES": I've read the book. It's frankly devastating to Senator Kerry what his fellow Vietnam guys are saying, what they experienced with him. They contradict just about every story he has told about his experience here.
JOHN O'NEILL, CO-AUTHOR, "UNFIT FOR COMMAND": It's a pattern of total lying and exaggeration, much of it very demeaning to the other people that served with him.
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST, "HARDBALL WITH CHRIS MATTHEWS": Who was the person that told you this that he didn't deserve the purple heart?
LARRY THURLOW: The people -- keep in mind...
MATTHEWS: Can you give me a name, sir?
THURLOW: The name I would give you after the fact is (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
KURTZ: Soon the broadcast networks were putting on swift boat veterans like John O'Neill as well.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And so what specific evidence do you have that John Kerry didn't deserve that purple heart?
O'NEILL: All right, first of all Dr. Letson was the treating physician.
KURTZ: Amid the sound and fury, "The Boston Globe, "Chicago Tribune," "Washington Post" and "New York Times" began poking holes in the Swift Boat Veterans' allegations. Three of the veterans, George Elliott, Adrian Lonsdale and Roy Hoffman had previously praised Kerry for bravery. Thurlow says there was no enemy fire when Kerry turned his boat around to pull crewmate Jim Rassmann out of a river.
JIM RASSMANN: I was receiving fire in the water every time I came up for air.
KURTZ: But Thurlow's own bronze star citation says there was enemy fire. The problem these are lengthy pieces dealing with complicated charges, hard to translate into good television, though some correspondents have certainly tried, besides the media have already moved on to the political question of whether President Bush would denounce the ad, not whether the ad was accurate.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Message wars, that anti-Kerry television commercial, the president praises Kerry's Vietnam service but refuses to condemn the ad.
KURTZ: For journalists of a certain generation, Vietnam remains the irresistible issue to the point that not much else is being covered in the campaign right now. That Kerry volunteered for Vietnam and George Bush did not has been drowned out by the shouting about whether Kerry was sufficiently wounded to justify those medals. For television this back and forth, he's a hero, no, he's a liar, is so much easier than cutting through the fog of a 35-year-old war.
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