CBS News uncovered new memos written by George W. Bush’s squadron commander in the Texas Air National Guard and interviewed Ben Barnes, the Texas Democrat who said he abused his power by helping young men, including Bush, get coveted spots in the Guard to evade Vietnam.
The story ran on the CBS Evening News last night and, longer, on Sixty Minutes II.
This morning’s New York Times, crediting CBS, carried the story, too.
But this morning’s Albuquerque Journal did not.
At the outset, let me say I think CBS puffed its story; neither the memos nor the Barnes interview caused my jaw to drop.
Having said that, the Journal’s treatment of the story is puzzling.
First, because the Journal did run a piece by Ron Hutcheson of Knight Ridder headlined "New Book. TV Ad to Take Aim at President’s Past." The CBS information might easily have fit into it or next to it.
Secondly, because Hutcheson’s second paragraph contains what looks like a reference to the CBS story. "On Wednesday, a new ad and a high-profile television interview suggested," Hutcheson wrote, "that Bush used political influence to avoid service in Vietnam, then went AWOL from his Air National Guard unit."
Nowhere in the body of the article is there any other reference to the "television interview," no identification of the interviewee or network.
Also, because a caption under an accompanying photo of George W. Bush in the cockpit of a TANG jet mentions Ben Barnes.
The story goes on to preview the forthcoming Kitty Kelley book on the Bush family and review Republican criticism of Senator Kerry’s Vietnam record and Democratic criticism of President Bush’s experience with the Texas Air National Guard. It quotes a college professor critical of attack ads and Senator John McCain, who beefs that the Presidential campaign is about what happened 30 years ago.
But it makes no reference to what CBS uncovered.
The explanation may be innocent, of course. After all, only yesterday the Journal ran an AP story (page 4) on Bush and the TANG. And while CBS advanced the story, it was hardly a blockbuster. Further, space is always a problem.
In the past, the Journal has done a good job of segregation, limiting its political views to the editorial and Op Ed pages rather than letting them influence daily news judgements. I hope that remains the case.