Noticed an interesting admission in this Washington Post article (emphasis added):

Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said he made the decision late Wednesday to fight back, during a teleconference from his Boston home with traveling staff and advisers in Washington. "When you shed your blood for your country, your instinct is to fight back," she said. ...

Cutter said the campaign relied on the news media, surrogates and 700 letters to the editor to discredit the charges. "But every time one of these guys [from the Swift boat group] shows up on Fox, we get calls from veterans," she said.

Fascinating. There's a controversy about, and the Kerry campaign admits it depends upon the media to carry water (throroughly discredit their critics) for them. And apparently she thinks it largely did: Cutter implies the hole in the bucket was Fox News, who allowed a few veterans to speak in their own voices.

(After all, it isn't as if Bush would have entertained any thought he could "rely upon the news media ... to discredit" the AWOL charges. Instead they were extremely reluctant to do so, and may even revive the issue again.)

An irony: Kerry's campaign spokesman alleges SwiftVets are a Bush "front" group, while lamenting that attacks from their "surrogates" didn't take care of the matter adequately. Uh, who's using "front groups" again?

The Post doesn't blink or note the implied hypocrisy.

How, again, is there any question there's a news media bias? Are Kerry's people also mistaken in thinking the media is pulling for them, mentioning them in the same breath as allied "surrogates"? If even they seem to think so, then why shouldn't the rest of us?