WSJ: Kerry/Phoenix Project Connection Being Ignored

John Fund writes an excellent column in today’s Wall Street Journal op-ed site, OpinionJournal.com, where he notices a double standard between the coverage of the public-service records of Bush and Kerry, and how the national news media speak volumes in their silence on the Phoenix Project:

Reporters spent days hounding White House spokesmen for records on the subject. In the end, it became clear that Mr. Bush chose to serve stateside during the war, was lax in attending guard duty during his last year, and had to feverishly make it up before he was honorably discharged. It’s clear President Bush doesn’t want to talk about his service, but reporters pressed for answers anyway.
It’s time they do the same for Mr. Kerry, who has laid down his actions in the Vietnam era as a marker for his character and, according to the Boston Globe, has refused to release his military records. Instead, Jack Kelly, a respected military columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, believes many journalists are “more interested in defeating President Bush than in providing readers with potentially important information which reflects poorly on Sen. John Kerry.”

Fund then reviews the details of Thomas Lipscomb’s story from the New York Daily Sun, laying out a case for journalistic neglect on behalf of the media. If you haven’t yet caught up to the story, Fund’s comprehensive review will bring you up to date, except for the complete lack of coverage from the media, which Fund may have anticipated would have been corrected by the time his column went to print. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. I wrote a response to Fund’s column — I haven’t written to OpinionJournal since I started blogging — congratulating him for finally taking this story national:

It’s a national embarassment that the national news media hasn’t at least acknowledged these charges in some measure. The Los Angeles Times last week put together a long story on Kerry’s FBI files, and spun the story into martyrdom for Kerry without ever mentioning Camil’s Phoenix Project or Kerry’s involvement in the debate, by now verified by several independent witnesses. The story was picked up by many newspapers off the wire, and several more (the Washington Post and New York Times prominent among them) wrote their own articles based on it, all ignoring the context of the Kansas City meeting. Only CNN mentioned it, and then only as a sort of “bull session” proposal that no one took seriously. I wrote to the reader reps of the Post, the NY Times, and the LA Times, and have yet to receive a response from any of them after a week.
After blogging about this issue for two weeks and interviewing Thomas Lipscomb on the radio in the Twin Cities, I share his frustration and his suspicions about the silence of the national media. I congratulate the Wall Street Journal for taking this story national and hope that it results in some real journalism from those who, so far, have seemed a lot more interesting in spin than reporting.

Make sure you read Fund’s article and submit your own responses. If you need background material, here are the links from my blog:
Lipscomb’s initial story
Lipscomb’s follow-up on the Kerry campaign pressuring a witness
Captain’s Quarters’ posts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
I’ve also covered this at Oh, That Liberal Media and Blogs for Bush.

One thought on “WSJ: Kerry/Phoenix Project Connection Being Ignored”

  1. Kerry’s Other War Record

    John Fund of the Wall Street Journal wrote about a story that has been brewing in the blogosphere (like Powerline and Captains Quarters) for several weeks now. Fund breaks the story down to this:
    In fact, Mr. Kerry acts as if he can’t remember much abo…

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