NYT: We vigorously debunked the Swift Boaters in 2004. (Sure you did)

The NYT is now claiming, rather incredibly, that they and the rest of the corporate media thoroughly debunked the Swift Boaters during the 2004 campaign. As Eric Boehlert asks, what campaign were they following?

First Eric notes how John McCain, who can do no wrong per Andrea Mitchell and David Broder and donut-toting Liz Sidoti, is actually using the Swift Boaters in his current campaign:

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth remain hovering like unwanted guests over the current campaign cycle.

Sen. John McCain, who four years ago criticized the Swift Boat smears, is now accepting their donations. And this week, he even dragged one of the Swift Boat Vets, Bud Day, out into public view to, of all things, condemn what the vet claimed were political attacks on McCain's Vietnam War record.

Next, Eric explains how the NYT thinks the media actually debunked the Swift Boaters in 2004:

[W]hat elevated the outlandish Swift Boat allegations that Sen. John Kerry had lied about his war injuries in Vietnam, and what gave the allegations legitimacy and legs, was the fact that the mainstream press not only showered the Swift Boat attacks with voluminous coverage (CNN aired nearly 300 segments on the topic), but that the press completely failed, in a timely fashion, to ferret out the lies the Swift Boat Vets were peddling as part of their elaborate campaign season hoax....

[T]he Times piece suggested that, regardless of Pickens' refusal to pay up, it was common knowledge back in 2004 that many of the Swift Boat accusations were hollow and that the accusers were often at odds with the facts and themselves.

"Of course, none of this is really new," the Times reported. "Extensive media accounts undermined the Swift Boat charges in 2004, pointing out that some of the Swift Boat critics had written statements during Vietnam lauding Mr. Kerry for extraordinary bravery in the incidents they later said he made up."

Uh, no they didn't - and that comes from independent media monitors at the Columbia Journalism Review:

The sad truth is that the Swift Boat hoax (and that's what it was -- a hoax) did not represent some sort of unvarnished truth-telling by the press. It represented a low point in timid campaign journalism.

"Instead of acting as filters for the truth, reporters nodded and attentively transcribed both sides of the story, invariably failing to provide context, background, or any sense of which claims held up and which were misleading," wrote Brian Montopoli, Zachary Roth, and Thomas Lang at CJR Daily, back in August 2004.

The press, in other words, got used. Badly....

But why rely on some wonks to explain how thoroughly the media botched their coverage of the Swift Boaters? Let's look at how the NYT themselves covered the story in 2004:

[I]n the final week of August 2004, when the controversy was raging in the press, three Vietnam vets independently stepped forward to support Kerry's version of events surrounding his Bronze Star award; a Bronze Star the Swift Boat accusers claimed was a fraud because Kerry had lied about being under fire. The three vets were Wayne Langhofer, Jim Russell, and Robert Lambert. Together, their stories obliterated any claim the Swift Boat Veterans had made about Kerry's Bronze Star being undeserved.

But how did the Times treat those revelations? It mostly ignored them. Neither Langhofer nor Lambert was ever mentioned by the Times, while Russell garnered just brief, passing mentions in the paper of record; a newspaper that published more than 100 articles and columns in 2004 mentioning the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

And note that, on August 23, 2004, the Times published a Page 1 piece regarding the political toll the Swift Boat attacks were taking on Kerry's campaign. Nowhere in the 1,500-word article was it suggested that the Swift Boat claims were unsubstantiated. Tactics were of paramount concern to Times campaign reporters, not so much the facts.

Bummer. Then Eric tells you how the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, Wall Street Journal, and PBS handled the story back then:

* The August 20, 2004, PBS' Washington Week hosted a detailed round-table discussion about the Swift Boat controversy, featuring editors and reporters from The Wall Street Journal, the Houston Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today. There was no mention of the glaring gaps in the Swift Boat allegations.

* An August 24, 2004, Boston Globe front-page article about the Swift Boat controversy and made no mention about the glaring gaps in the allegations against Kerry.

* August 24, 25, 26, 27, and 28, 2004, Washington Post front-page articles on the Swift Boat controversy made no mention of the glaring gaps in the allegations.

This comes as no surprise to anyone who wasn't high or comatose during the 2004 elections. We were begging the media to stop giving the Swift Boaters credibility, to stop treating the story as a he-said-she-said where they have to treat both sides equally, treat their arguments as legitimate, in order to be "fair." The media didn't do its due diligence, they didn't debunk the Swift Boaters, they didn't go out of their way like Andrea Mitchell and Bob Schieffer to gush over what a war hero John Kerry was, the way they're gushing incessantly over John McCain during their broadcasts. No, when a Democratic war hero was running for president, the corporate media let the Republicans roast him at the spit. And now the NYT would like you to absolve it of all sin. I don't think so.