With great fanfare the other day, Oprah Winfrey asked James Frey a question that mainstream journalists refuse to ask George W. Bush: “Why would you lie?”
Many pundits and news outlets have chortled at the televised unmasking of Frey as a liar. The reverberations have spanned from schlock media to highbrow outlets. On Friday, the PBS “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” devoted an entire segment to what happened. The New York Times supplemented its page-one coverage with an editorial that concluded “Ms. Winfrey gave the audience, including us, what it was hoping for: a demand to hear the truth.”
A key reality of the National Security Agency spying story is: President Bush lied. But routinely missing from media coverage is a demand to hear the truth.
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