Page Six tries to play catch up with TVNewser’s scoop yesterday on Bob Costas’ no show on Larry King Live Thursday. ICN wouldn’t have bothered even mentioning this except there is this red herring at the end of the piece which raised our eyebrows…

It’s possible CNN brass didn’t argue with Costas and try to change his mind because his ratings have been so dreadful. “Costas averaged just 222,000 viewers in the 25-54 demographic, which is 30 percent lower than what King usually averages,” a TV insider tattled to PAGE SIX. CNN said comparisons were skewed because of King’s tribute shows to Peter Jennings, which featured news legends such as Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw.

That’s quite a lot of spin from CNN. Comparisons are skewed because of King’s tribute to Peter Jennings?!?!? You gotta be kidding. That was just one week. What about the rest of the time that King’s numbers were significantly higher?

Editor & Publisher’s Greg Mitchell uses CNN’s Iraq Intelligence failure special airing tomorrow night to take the media to the woodshed for being asleep at the switch as well as not holding itself accountable….(via WHAC)

While the long-awaited program is sure to revive interest, and anger, over the administration’s false selling of the war on the basis of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, it may well leave the press off the hook. Yet it was the media’s swallowing of the false claims in Powell’s crucial speech that enabled the march to war to continue.
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Why does any of this matter? It’s fashionable to suggest that the White House was bent on war and nothing could have stopped them. But until the Powell speech, public opinion, editorial sentiment (as chronicled by E&P at the time) and street protests were all building against the war.

The Powell speech, and the media’s swallowing of it, changed all that.