In February, Newsweek's Howard Fineman touted: "His advocates are the men who served under his command of Swift Boats in the Mekong Delta -- one of whom, Jim Rassman, Kerry saved by hoisting him out of the Bay Hap River under enemy fire. Rassman's unscripted appearance in Des Moines was worth millions of ads and months of strategy." (So, you could add, are syrupy articles in Newsweek.)

 Fineman added that "delighted" top Kerry strategist Bob Shrum had presented Rassman with a copy of liberal historian Douglas Brinkley's Kerry war-hero hagiography "Tour of Duty" with the inscription, "To Jim, who fished us out of the river."

 So where is Fineman now to interview the other veterans on the other Swift Boats? The Swift Boat veterans opposing Kerry say there was no enemy fire as Rassman was pulled out of the river, meaning Fineman may have forwarded a myth in front of millions of readers by helpfully accepting whatever the Democratic candidate and his buddy said on the stump.

 In Newsweek, as late as the August 2 issue, reporters were still oozing like kids reading a comic book. "Kerry's coolness under fire was remarkable," they claimed. "It is hard to forget the image of his turning his boat around and reaching over the bow to pull -- with a wounded arm -- a man from the water while the bullets splattered around them." They declared "Kerry's war record has been endlessly discussed and picked over" -- a ridiculous assertion given the major media's silence about Kerry's critics.

 Kerry has been caught in fibs on his Vietnam service -- for example, how the anti-Kerry veterans exposed his long-standing claim that he was serving in Cambodia during Christmas in 1968, a claim contradicted by the facts. Yet the media still just whistle right past it, even as Kerry admits error and Douglas Brinkley prepares another correction for his paperback edition.

 Our media aren't judging the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth based on the quality of their facts. They're judging them on the seriousness of their threat to the media's ultimate goal: putting John Kerry in the White House.