A swift boat kick in the teeth: how the mainstream media grapple with partisans.

• Author: Welch, Matt

WHEN THE PARTISAN tsunami started by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth began inundating several weblogs I frequent, especially Glenn Reynolds' InstaPundit.com and the eponymous rogerlsimon.com, my reaction was almost exactly the same as it was to dozens of other hot-button political controversies of the last decade, from Whitewater to the Florida recount to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: I put my hands over my ears, thrust my nose firmly in the air, and said, "Na na ha, I can't hear you."

"What I don't understand is how anyone professes to truly give a flip about what John Kerry and George Bush did 32 or 36 years ago," I huffed on my own weblog on August 9, as the swiftee wave began to swell. "Whatever happened to the New Seriousness after Sept. 11? And how many people who are feverishly talking up all this nonsense have NOT already long made up their minds on who they're going to vote for?"

This approach is rational and time-saving for both readers and reporters who want to avoid being sucked down political rabbit holes. And yet from the point of view of journalism's institutions, it is utterly irresponsible.

Contradiction? Not at all, though it certainly plays like one in the endless media bias wars, which is where the swift boat story wound up after a single turbulent month.

Individuals cannot reasonably be expected to express an interested opinion on every micro-scandal of the day. That is the daunting task for undaunted talk radio hosts, Web pundits, and bar drunks, and a major reason why such polymathic opinion dispensers rarely provide much more than a light snack for those seeking the nourishment of truth. Theirj ob, usually, is to provide entertainment and oxygen--heat, not light--and they are constrained by neither the manners nor the objective pose of the nonadvocacy media. Conversely, straight reporters and editors, if they are to make the time for mastering their areas of specialization, must routinely blot out everyday poetical debates.

But their news organizations don't have to. Large newsrooms have the explicit mission and requisite staffing to arbitrate competing claims--or better (from their point of view), to set off the debate with their own groundbreaking investigations. Yet when faced with a dispute as passionate as the one over John Kerry's Vietnam service, many responsible editors throw up their hands and wish poxes on both houses.

"Never, in the best part of two decades, have I had to reject, throw away or send...