The Lukewarm Truth

Craig's denials seem even shakier, considering that the Idaho Republican pleaded guilty in the Minnesota bathroom bust he is now challenging in court. The Idaho Statesman has quoted another source who claims he had a sexual encounter with Craig in a Union Station bathroom. The senator's flat denials can certainly be portrayed as straining credulity, but there is no definitive proof that he engaged in gay sexual misconduct.

Gonzales stepped down as attorney general last week after newspaper accounts repeatedly demonstrated that he had made false or misleading statements. New York Times ombudsman Clark Hoyt wondered why his paper didn't brand Gonzales a liar, instead of using such formulations as: "An accumulating body of evidence is at odds with the statements of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales." Hoyt concluded that he doesn't want to return to an era "when public figures were routinely called liars, traitors, thieves, drunks and adulterers in newspapers."

The media's passive regurgitation of administration spin during the run-up to the war underscores the weakness of simply quoting dueling spokesmen. But aggressive reporting doesn't mean convicting people or taking sides in wartime, however much that might please the partisans.

Powell's Non-Interview

A few months ago, Colin Powell says, a puzzled acquaintance sent him a copy of an interview with the former secretary of state that appeared in the French magazine Politique Internationale, under the byline of Alexis Debat.

"We scratched our heads for weeks and said, 'Who is this guy?' " Powell says. "We checked our calendars and couldn't find any record of him. I said 'What the hell' and forgot it." Using his cursory French, Powell says, "it looked like things I say all the time."

When Debat, a former ABC News consultant, admitted last week putting his name on interviews he did not conduct with Barack Obama and other prominent figures, Powell's spokeswoman, Peggy Cifrino, called the magazine to complain. The editor was "very apologetic and mortified," Cifrino says. Politique Internationale says it is a victim of Debat's fabrications.

Debat insists his role was to draft questions for the interviews, but Powell isn't buying. "I didn't realize the guy had created a whole industry of false interviews," he says.

The Real Cafferty File

Jack Cafferty doesn't pull punches in his CNN commentaries or, it turns out, in telling his life story.

His father was a drunk who subjected him to "verbal and emotional abuse." His mother was a drunk who attempted suicide. And he was a drunk who often went on the air after imbibing. Even when he was co-anchoring the top-rated newscast at New York's WNBC, "I was unhappy all the time -- miserable, verbally or emotionally explosive, short-fused, thin-skinned, moody and angry."

Cafferty makes these confessions in a memoir, "It's Getting Ugly Out There," that combines his trademark rants -- mainly against the Bush administration -- with some searing confessions.

"If I was going to write a book reflecting what I am," he says in an interview, "I owed it to people to provide some context about me. It was a little bit painful to go back and go through it, but I had to do it. Some of the things I say are a little out there." Cafferty says his background helps explain his constant challenges to authority.

After breaking into television on a Reno station as "Ranger Jack" on a kids' show, the college dropout found his first marriage collapsing, in part under the weight of his hard drinking. That continued during Cafferty's second marriage and during his days as a New York anchor. "I never went on as a stumbling, bumbling, slurring drunk, but I did a lot of shows with alcohol in my system," he says.

Cafferty says he realized in 1989 that "if I didn't make changes, I would be jeopardizing my marriage, and I didn't want to challenge my old man's record. He and my mother had 11 marriages between them, and it would have been 12 if he hadn't killed one" -- a fiancee who died in a car accident while he was driving drunk.

Cafferty quit drinking that year and also gave up smoking after suffering a collapsed lung. He stopped sending his father checks after concluding that he was blowing the money on booze. They were estranged for a decade, although there was a reconciliation before his death.

On CNN's "Situation Room" he often seems angry, but Cafferty says cranky is a better description. "I think a certain amount of civic outrage is long overdue in this country," he says.

Howard Kurtz hosts CNN's weekly media program, "Reliable Sources."