John Leo points out that mainstream media doesn’t realize how badly their credibility has been damaged by the CBS fraudulent memo scandal and the media blackout of the Swift Boat Veterans story: Self-inflicted wounds.

The e-mail on last week’s Rather-gate column was almost entirely furious with CBS. About 95 percent of some 300 letters and E-mails attacked the network, and all but four or five of those messages denounced my oh-so-moderate suggestion that the goal is not a vengeful assault on CBS but safeguards for fairer reporting. “No,” wrote one reader, “we really want a vengeful assault.”

Normally, the mail hovers around 50 percent pro and 50 percent con, partly because many readers greatly enjoy pointing out my many deficiencies. A lopsided reaction like this indicates a huge amount of antipress animosity, while here in Manhattan news circles the Rather incident is regarded as a simple mistake and not a very important one at that. The war over press bias has reached a boil that may threaten the whole news business, but the industry seems to think that nothing much is going on. It’s just those yahoos in flyover country getting all excited again.