COMM 386: Pundits counterattack?

I'm not even going to try to put all this in perspective ...

In today's Washington Post, media critic Howard Kurtz answers a charge of bias from right-wing pundit William Kristol.

When I say the media are going after false or questionable claims by the [John] McCain camp, Kristol retorts: "In other words, the media are going after McCain. ... 'Why? Because McCain is doing well. And because Sarah Palin is surviving -- even flourishing -- in the midst of the liberal media onslaught. When the media get mad, they don't just pout. They pounce."

Kristol takes issue with some of my examples, which is fine, and then says Obama also distorts, noting his accusation that McCain wants a 100-year war in Iraq. But here's the difference: When the press called him on that, Obama stopped saying it. Sarah Palin said again yesterday that she'd said thanks but no thanks to the Bridge to Nowhere -- after every major news organization showed that she originally supported the project. (It's even on videotape.) You'd think she would at least modify her language. But no.

Kurtz' column is worth reading in its entirety, since it consists mostly of quotes from other writers and offers a snapshot of media commentary at this point in time.

Two other columns in today's Post, on more or less the same theme, got a lot of attention. In one, that got 1,411 comments (as of 4:30 p.m. Central time), Richard Cohen says McCain to task for violating what he understands to be his own standards:

McCain has turned ugly. His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most. He has contempt for most of his colleagues for that very reason: They lie. He tells the truth. ... No more, though.

The other, by Eugene Robinson, with 1,180 comments, notes that McCain's running mate Sarah Palin still says she said thanks-but-no-thanks to that bridge in Alaska after she confessed on national television she was for it before she was against it ... or something like that. If you're confused, Robinson helpfully adds:

In her interview with ABC's Charles Gibson, Palin 'fessed up. It was "not inappropriate" for a mayor or a governor to work with members of Congress to obtain federal money for infrastructure projects, she argued. "What I supported," she said, "was the link between a community and its airport."

Case closed. Except that on Saturday, days after the interview, Palin said this to a crowd in Nevada: "I told Congress thanks but no thanks to that Bridge to Nowhere -- that if our state wanted to build that bridge, we would build it ourselves."

That's not just a lie, but an acknowledged lie. What she actually told Congress was more like, "Gimme the money for the bridge" -- and then later, after the whole thing had become an embarrassment, she didn't object to using the money for other projects.

I'm not sure all this answers Kristol's point. Would the pundits be as vigilant if McCain and Palin were way down in the polls?