The eye blinks.(The Media)

IT is to the credit of CBS that its internal inquiry, led by Richard Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi, did not whitewash the truth about the network's story attacking President Bush's National Guard service. The Thornburgh-Boccardi report calls the story "inaccurate," "false," "deficient," and driven by a "myopic zeal." It is also to the network's credit that the report resulted in three forced resignations by CBS executives and the firing of CBS producer Mary Mapes.

But the review panel appears to have lost its nerve when addressing the question of political bias. The report detects no evidence of "any political agenda on the part of any of the people involved in this," but only "an insensitivity to appearances." Please. Freelance reporter Michael Smith wrote to Mapes in an August 31, 2004, e-mail that the story about Bush "could possibly change the momentum of an election." Mapes worked the story for five years. She made extraordinary efforts, and cut many corners, to get it on the air. Are we really to believe that she had no political motivation? More to the point, are we really to believe that her colleagues would have tolerated a similarly obsessive quest for dirt on John Kerry? ...