Has the media gotten a wake up call?

As we reported yesterday CNN and MSNBC both had problems with Zell Miller's factoids.

Now Skippy points out that the Associated Press and the Washington Post are actually calling Republican lies, of all things, lies.
The AP story:

By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK - President Bush glossed over some complicating realities in Iraq (news - web sites), Afghanistan and the home front in arguing the case Americans are safer and his opponent cannot deliver.Bush's acceptance speech Thursday night conveyed facts that told only part of the story, hardly unusual for this most political of occasions.


He took some license in telling Americans that Democratic opponent John Kerry "is running on a platform of increasing taxes."


Kerry would, in fact, raise taxes on the richest Americans but as part of a plan to keep the Bush tax cuts for everyone else and even cut some of them more. That's not a tax-increase platform any more than Bush's plan for private retirement accounts is a platform to reduce Social Security benefits.

And from the Post:

GOP Prism Distorts Some Kerry Positions

By Glenn Kessler and Dan Morgan
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 3, 2004; Page A01

Speakers at this week's Republican convention have relentlessly attacked John F. Kerry for statements he has made and votes he has taken in his long political career, but a number of their specific claims -- such as his votes on military programs -- are at best selective and in many cases stripped of their context, according to a review of the documentation provided by the Bush campaign.

As a senator, Kerry has long been skeptical of big-ticket weapons systems, especially when measured against rising budget deficits, and to some extent he opened himself to this line of attack when he chose to largely skip over his Senate career during his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention last month. But the barrage by Republicans at their own convention has often misportrayed statements or votes that are years, if not decades, old.

We can only hope that this new found desire to actually do journalism will continue.