The outrage du jour

Howard Kurtz rounds up the media stampede over the Abu Ghraib story, but he's defending the nuttiness of the reactions:

I knew this was coming.

You could smell it, sense it, feel it.

Someone was going to accuse the media of pushing an antiwar agenda by reporting the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

On one level, this is hardly surprising. Every issue these days, and certainly any issue that touches on Iraq, is part of a highly charged partisan maelstrom.. . .

Still, you'd think that the sheer cruelty of the prison photographs, including the latest obtained by The Post, would blow away any doubts that this is an important, as well as deeply depressing, story. That is, even if you were an enthusiastic supporter of the war, you would not want this sort of news suppressed.

Who said that it shouldn't be covered? What annoys me about the coverage is the spin that this is some kind of coverup. The President, Donald Rumsfeld, and the head of the Joint Chiefs have been put in a position of commenting on the evidence in a pending prosecution, possibly prejudicing their rights to a fair trial. Nobody has minimized the seriousness of the charges. The investigation has been going forward as it should, but the evidence being leaked to the media gives the defendants a good argument that their rights have been prejudiced.

That's what's wrong with it. Howard Kurtz should review the defense by John Adams of the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre.