From WNYKRC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. After the first

debate, the TV pundits said Kerry crushed Bush, and later the polls confirmed that. After the

next three debates, when the talking heads claimed a winner, they often missed the mark, and the

viewing public knew it. Throughout the process, there was another debate,

both inside and outside the media, over what the media ought to be doing. Prognosticating

seemed to be just another kind of filler, as were the often unreliable instant polls, and certainly

the forays into the spin room. The anchors all conceded that point, even as they jaw-boned

with campaign mouthpieces. And since last month's 60-minute scandal over forged memos, TV has a

growing credibility problem. During Wednesday's debate, Kerry cited the findings of two networks

that found that the president had distorted his health care plan,

and the president quipped...

In all due respect, I'm not so sure it's credible to quote leading news organizations about...

Oh, never mind. Anyway...

But the fact is, the media actually did shed some light on the debates by doing more of what they should have been doing all along, checking the claims, the accusations, the facts of the candidates, CNN.

500,000 kids lost after-school programs because of your budget.

Wrong. Bush did propose cutting 400 million in after-school funding in his 2004 budget, but Congress

refused to go along.

No children lost their program.

He's proposed $2.2 trillion of new spending, and yet Bush was using an old figure from

the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

...