On Monday, in a column that gives richly deserved credit to Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo and TPM Muckraker for hammering away at the U.S. attorneys firings, Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz finally acknowledges that Salon got to the Walter Reed scandal before the Post did.
But significantly, it's not anyone from the Post Kurtz quotes to give Salon credit; it's McClatchy Washington bureau chief John Walcott. Which lets me, belatedly, note that Salon wasn't alone in getting the Iraq war right four years ago -- the reporting of the Knight Ridder Washington bureau, especially reporters Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay, was unmatched for its skepticism and enterprise, and went largely ignored by the rest of the media. In his remarks to Kurtz, Walcott notes that the news business tends to let the Post and the New York Times "set the news agenda," which he observes "was a problem in the coverage of the Bush administration's case for war in Iraq." On the Walter Reed story, Walcott added: "All of us should have been faster to follow the trail that Salon broke."
That's the first mention I could find in the Post of Mark Benjamin's great Walter Reed reporting, by the way, which is kind of amazing, but better than nothing.
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