While it will never happen, as it would uncover too many rocks the press would prefer to not have uncovered, it would be nice for the Washington Post and the New York Times to institute a "Truth Commission" to examine what happened with their reporting of the Whitewater "scandal" in the 1990s.
Recently Thomas Friedman of the New York Times pointed out that "The right impeached Bill Clinton and hounded him from Day 1 with the bogus Whitewater “scandal"" and in a review in the Washington Post (shocking!) admitted that "the New York Times and The Washington Post, along with the networks and news magazines...were part of a giant scandal machine that dominated official Washington in the first few years after the Cold War."
Yet while the Washington Post lead the investigation into the accuracy of Jayson Blair's articles and CBS had an outside investigator looking into sourcing of a story on George Bush "war" record, there is little interest in looking back at Whitewater. Sure, way back in 1996 or so Gene Lyons wrote Fool For Scandal which showed how lacking the media reports were on Whitewater. Unfortunately the mainstream media wasn't interested. Later they admitted that just possibly they overreacted but oh well.
Today Dan Rather's credibility is severely challenged by a "review" of his 60 Minutes story on George W. Bush. Yet the Post and Times reporter continue with only those few educated on the issue knowing that their biased reporting eventually helped convince enough people in Florida (whose votes were actually counted) to "elect" George W. Bush. This led to the possibly worst presidency in American history.
Perhaps the reporters are very pleased with the work they have done and that very few people will every know.
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