A must read by Jay Rosen on what's wrong with the press.

[beachmom]

http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2010/06/14/ideology_press.html

Take the time and read the whole thing, because I really think he is onto something. I don't know about the rest of you but I still puzzle over what happened in the summer of 2004 when a bunch of liars got a free pass to trash Senator Kerry's military record (and he actually served IN Vietnam and IN combat) for weeks. No one has held the press to account for it, and there is no guarantee that this sort of behavior won't pop up again. Jay gets into the "extreme ideology" of the press which is not what either left or right thinks it is. But here is one part of the piece which directly relates to the swiftboating IMHO:

5. He said, she said journalism, a formation I have been trying to bust up by pushing for more fact checking.

“He said, she said” journalism means…
- There’s a public dispute.
- The dispute makes news.
- No real attempt is made to assess clashing truth claims in the story, even though they are in some sense the reason for the story. (Under the “conflict makes news” test.)
- The means for assessment do exist, so it’s possible to exert a factual check on some of the claims, but for whatever reason the report declines to make use of them.
- The symmetry of two sides making opposite claims puts the reporter in the middle between polarized extremes.

When these five conditions are met, the genre is in gear.

I recommend the entire piece.