MSM still clueless about basic details of Kerry's military record (and SwiftVets' claims)

Tom Maguire of Just One Minute points out that NYT reporter Lawrence K. Altman (who reports that he's a physician-reporter himself) felt obliged to make a derogatory reference to the SwiftVets while writing an article about Sen. Kerry's medical history and health, but revealed a complete lack of understanding of either Sen. Kerry's war record or the SwiftVets' allegations.  Per NYT's Dr. Altman:

Mr. Kerry's injuries as a young man, however, seem to have given him more trouble — political trouble, that is — than his shoulder surgery.

A group of veterans has challenged the validity of the three Purple Hearts that Mr. Kerry received for wounds he suffered while serving on Swift boats in the Vietnam war. These critics suggested that the shrapnel that hit him in one mission was rice, not metal.

However, CT scan X-rays taken at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston document that two pieces of metal shrapnel are embedded deep in Mr. Kerry's left thigh, next to the femur, said Dr. Gerald J. Doyle, Mr. Kerry's personal physician in Boston who reviewed the X-rays at the request of this reporter, who is a physician. Doctors treating the wound in 1969 decided to leave the shrapnel in place. "One piece of shrapnel is about the size of a bullet, the other a bit smaller," Dr. Doyle said.

Mr. Kerry said, "I can't tell you I really feel it," but "it's back in here somewhere," as he slapped his thigh.

As Tom writes, this is indeed a thigh-slapper, at reporter-doctor Altman's expense.  Kerry has three Purple Hearts, the first for a tiny shrapnel injury to his arm sustained on 02Dec68; the second for a shrapnel injury to his leg sustained on 20Feb69; and the third, according to the medal citation, for a bruise to his arm sustained on 13Mar69.  The "accusation" that Kerry was also treated for "rice" blown into his butt earlier in the day on 13Mar69 from careless behavior around a grenade used to blow up a rice pile has its origins not from the SwiftVets, but from Kerry supporter and rescuee James Rassmann, as reported in Brinkley's Tour of Duty.  Even the most fundamental, basic research that any junior high school newspaper reporter would have done would have alerted the NYT's Altman that the metal shrapnel thigh wound from on 20Feb69, and likewise the Purple Heart medal resulting therefrom (that is, Kerry's second Purple Heart), has never been seriously contested by the SwiftVets.

Physicians and reporters are both supposed to get their patient's/subject's "history" before drawing and recording their conclusions.  Physician-reporter Altman flunks — badly — in both capacities, and the NYT once again shows that its editors and fact-checkers completely lack even the most basic familiarity with Kerry's military record and the SwiftVets' claims to catch such errors.  I repeat, this would be embarrassingly for a junior high school newspaper, and falls well below the journalistic standards of tens of thousands of blogs from either side of the political spectrum. 

The Kerry campaign has consistently refused to release medical records, including those relating to Kerry's Vietnam wounds, for inspection by genuinely independent outsiders, insisting instead that the public's "right to know" is sufficiently satisfied by peek-and-tell sessions with friendly reporters.  When the NYT sends someone to do the peeking who's either unprepared, an idiot, or perhaps both, how seriously are we supposed to take the rest of his or the NYT's reporting on Kerry's medical history?

The New York Times' Public Editor is Daniel Okrent — [email protected].