In a "Best of the Web" item on the media's swarming mass attack on the Duke lacrosse players, James Taranto spots this year's equivalent of 2004’s "fake but accurate" Ra^therGate defense, from Newsweek's Evan Thomas, famous for another line regarding media groupthink from that year.

Read the whole quote, which Taranto rightly calls "damning".

Update: Jules Crittenden has some thoughts that are well worth reading on how the media's narratives impact the war in Iraq.