In recent months, many journalists have tried to justify their earlier position by emphasizing difficulties in Iraq rather than progress. MSNBC producer Noah Oppenheim deserves a gold medal for traveling to Iraq to "find out if things had really gone as horribly wrong as the evening newscasts and major print dailies reported," and then describing "the failure of American journalism" in the latest Weekly Standard: "America has brought to Iraq the notorious Red State-Blue State divide. Most journalists are Blue State people in outlook, and most of those administering the occupation are Red. (Since) most journalists did not support this war to begin with, (they) "feel vindicated whenever the effort stumbles."

But here's the good news: Editors at the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune during 2003 acknowledged their newspapers' pro-abortion bias. Don Wycliffe, public editor at the Tribune, quoted complaints by pro-life readers about Tribune headlines ("Anti-choice groups celebrate victories ... Anti-choice victories alarm pro-choice groups") and commented, "The perspective of those who define the issues involved in terms of ‘choice' was taken as normative. ... The result was two headlines that couldn't have been more slanted if they had come directly from the public relations office of NARAL Pro-Choice America."

Meanwhile, the big media lie for 2004 -- Howard Dean is a moderate -- already has emerged. The Media Research Center, which supplied the quotations above, notes that on Tuesday night CBS announced that Dean "had a moderate record during his 10 years in the Vermont statehouse." Look for more of that, as we find out whether the Dean drive represents the death throes of the old McGovern order or a second wind.