Last night on Fox News (12/22/10), Karl Rove and Bill O'Reilly attempted to defend GOP opposition to the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010, which would provide health care for 9/11 Ground Zero workers.

In his final broadcast of the year (12/16/10), Comedy Central's Jon Stewart devoted the entire show to lambasting the Republican opposition. Stewart's attention to the issue seems to have pushed other media outlets to pay attention to this issue. (With any luck, we'll remember this the next time there's a "debate" about people watching a comedy show instead of "real" news.)

Rove and O'Reilly's defense of GOP intransigence is hardly worth recounting. What was notable was their suggestion that Jon Stewart suspiciously developed an interest in this story just last week:

ROVE: But look, where was Mr. Stewart earlier this year--

O'REILLY: He didn't know about it.

ROVE: --when they weren't doing voodoo diddly squat to move this through? Where was the president of the United States?

O'REILLY: Look, look, look--you know the answers to these questions. You know the answer to these questions. They're demagoguing the issue now.

ROVE: Absolutely.

O'REILLY: Because they've squeezed it into a corner where they want to pass it tomorrow.

This is, unsurprisingly, false. Stewart did a report on the health bill in August (8/4/10), when he blasted Congressional Republicans and Democrats for the failure to pass the bill--leading him to declare about the political process,  "I give up."  You can watch it here. And send it to Bill O'Reilly while you're at it (oreilly@foxnews.com).

As yet another study is released documenting the damaging health effects of breathing in toxic Ground Zero dust, it's good to see corporate media outlets taking it seriously. (Most media outlets, anyway--the New York Post continues to give a platform to deniers.)

It's worth remembering, though--since they won't remind you--that for many months after 9/11, some outlets--the New York Times in particular--downplayed the fallout and mustered shockingly little journalistic skepticism of government reassurances about safety.

The attitude of Andrew Revkin, the Times' environmental reporter at the time, says it all. As I wrote in 2006:

The Times' Revkin told American Journalism Review (1–2/03), "We were, I think, bending over backwards to be sure we were reporting a risk only if we knew it, whereas others, I feel rather strongly, were flipping it the other way." Revkin cited the Daily News as an example. When asked how he thought the 9/11 health story would end, Revkin told AJR, "I think it's going to fade away."

Instead of acting as the watchdog it's supposed to be, the New York Times reinforced misleading government claims that directly impacted the lives and health of thousands of New Yorkers. It's an important history that you won't hear about from the Times, which has never acknowledged or apologized for its reporting.

You can read that history in my article, "Gullibility Begins at Home: NYT Accepted False Reassurances on Ground Zero Safety" (Extra!, 11-12/06).

Recapping at TPM Café (5/27/09) how the U.S. "press bent over backward to paint both Bushes as moderate, sensible, nice guy Republicans," Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell writes that "a hard-right [George W.] Bush, whether real or media-created, would have never beaten Gore--not that this one did either." Reminding us that "the New York Times, for example, had been very tough on [President Bill] Clinton on its editorial page," Mitchell says that "once in office, a long honeymoon between press and president ensued," and "just as Bush's approval ratings tanked and criticism was about to spread, 9/11 came along to torment the country, but save Bush." Mitchell then brings us into the present with shrewd insight into a hypothetical:

No one in the media criticized Bush for months, let alone suggested that maybe he had let down the country and invited a terrorist attack, or at least failed to prevent it. (Imagine that happening in the future if the country is attacked again under Obama--watch Fox and Friends howl.) Some have suggested that the New York Times, and others long accused of exhibiting liberal bias, went overboard on backing Bush after 9/11, given a rare chance to wave the flag and promote a war (Afghanistan) without shame for once and bolster their flagging image as super-patriots.

Of course, the problem was: They didn't stop there, and most went along like sheep in the run-up to the Iraq War.

"In fact," Mitchell notes, the date of his piece "marks the fifth anniversary of the day the Times belatedly admitted its failures on Iraq (while refusing to name or punish reporters and editors). It wasn't just a failure on WMD, it was a failure to recognize Bush and his crowd for what they were, individually and collectively."