Here's an answer to a question from the 2000 election that always bugged me, "Why didn't the 2000 Boston Globe articles on Bush's AWOL status not get picked up by more media outlets?" Robinson, the reporter who broke the Globe story, says the press felt it had sufficiently vetted Bush, and didn't want to revisit an issue they missed. I can agree with that, especially since the recent reporting in places like the Washington Post has hardly been an improvement in terms of accuracy. But I still wonder why such an obvious headline-maker like Bush being AWOL would get soft-pedaled. Maybe the press needs to hear things like this first from the Washington Times.

Boston Writer on the AWOL Story That First Broke in 2000: "Asked why so few papers followed up on his reporting for the May 23, 2000, Globe story, Walter V. Robinson told E&P, 'When a newspaper has done a thorough scrub on someone and not found anything, then somebody else reports it, they are not exactly eager to follow up. Other news organizations are not inclined to credit their competition, particularly if they have done their own look at the candidate.'"