The press gets tough, but maybe it's a little too late?

Bravo to Salon for publishing an article today on how although the press has been very vigilant lately about holding the government accountable for Katrina, it's not deserving of a full pat on the back.

Forgive some of us for not celebrating the press's coming-out party," the piece starts. The fact that this kind of aggressive questioning of people in power during times of crisis now passes as news itself only highlights just how timid the mainstream press corps has been during the Bush years.

Is it too much to ask for Russert to just once have shown the same passion -- or even hint of outrage -- when interviewing Vice President Dick Cheney about the administration's botched occupation of Iraq in which nearly 2,000 Americans have died? ("How could the president be so wrong, so misinformed?" Russert could have demanded.) Imagine if the press had shown a glimmer of its newfound truth-telling fervor while pursuing the WMD fiasco or uncovering the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth hoax last year, or half a dozen lesser episodes in which the Bush White House mugged the truth and the press knew it but then looked away.

Face it, people: We fell asleep on the job.

And it took a devastated New Orleans to wake us all up.