I just caught the tail end of our own David Frum and Clarence Page on CNN’s Reliable Sources. Frum did a very good job as one would expect. But He let one point of Page’s go unanswered. Howie Kurtz recounted the complaints from critics of the Times’ report on bombgate, specifically how it contained little context about how much weaponry had already been destroyed in Iraq. Page responded that the newspaper business is a daily business and, after all, those facts were reported on later when they were available (I don’t have a transcript obviously since it was live TV four minutes ago). But that’s the whole point. It’s entirely defensible to say that a newspaper shouldn’t be expected to report on facts it doesn’t know yet or can’t confirm. The problem is that the info on the 400,000 tons of weaponry destroyed was well-known before the Times ran its story. Those weren’t knew or unconfirmed facts. They were facts that made the story less sensational and less damaging to Bush.