The Questions The Mainstream Media Needs To Ask John Kerry About Vietnam
The mainstream media has done an extremely poor job of covering the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth story.
When the group first formed in April, the media largely ignored their explosive charges despite the fact that many of the people involved are vets and war heroes who knew John Kerry in Vietnam. Even after the group’s book, “Unfit for Command,” started selling like wildfire & conservative bloggers and talk radio hosts started talking about the story daily, most of the mainstream media continued to treat the SBVFT as a non-story.
Only after John Kerry attacked the SBVFT did most of the “dead tree” media begin to cover the story, if you consider parroting the line taken by the Kerry campaign on the ads and smearing the Swiftees for Truth for daring to attack John Kerry’s war record “cover(ing) the story”.
Perhaps the most disconcerting thing of all has been that much of the mainstream media seems to be simply rejecting the claims of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth out of hand without even bothering to familiarize themselves with many of the charges being made. For example, both Chris Matthews & Jim Lehrer seemed to be totally unaware that the Swift Boat Vets for Truth are claiming that John Kerry received 2 Purple Hearts for accidentally self-inflicted wounds. That’s just embarrassing.
So, in an effort to help everyone out there, journalists, voters, bloggers, you name it, try to get a handle on this whole “Swift Boat Vets thing,” I put together a list of 10 questions for John Kerry prompted by things said by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. While this is by no means a comprehensive list, it covers most of the hot issues in the blogosphere. Moreover, I think you’ll find that these are important questions that John Kerry needs to answer if he’s going to prove the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth wrong when they claim he’s “Unfit for Command”. (Cont)