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In Washington, people don't make mistakes. Mistakes get made! It's totally passive! Let's go to the transcripts:

Ronald Reagan, speaking about Iran-contra:

"Mistakes were made."

Bill Clinton:

"Mistakes were made here by people who either did it deliberately or inadvertently. Now it's up to others to decide whether mistakes were made deliberately or inadvertently."

Rick Santorum:

“Certainly, mistakes were made. But that’s a criticism you can make of every conflict.”

John McCain:

"Was the Pentagon way too optimistic? Of course, they were. And, again, mistakes were made."

Henry Kissinger:

"The decisions made in high office are usually 51-49 decisions so it is quite possible that mistakes were made."

George W. Bush:

"It's also important for the people of Iraq to know that in a democracy, everything is not perfect, that mistakes are made."

Alberto Gonzales:

"I acknowledge that mistakes were made here."

Howard Kurtz noted yesterday that the focus of the "Evening News'" new series "The American Spirit" – people tackling problems – is "familiar for network television."

So we thought it would be worth taking a look at a past Public Eye post, which examined a bit of the history of such programming on network news.

Back in 2005, we noticed a trend in reporting "good news" stories. The NBC "Nightly News" had begun it's "Making A Difference" series, which highlighted positive stories such as an optometrist who delivers glasses to Third World countries. CBS News' "Sunday Morning" had recently included a segment that highlighted similarly positive stories from around the country, like a school lunch program that had been revamped to include only all natural food.

At the time, we spoke to a few network news veterans about the tendency of news outlets to try out these types of stories every now and then. Their comments give us some insight into why series' like "The American Spirit" keep recurring … and why they sometimes don't last.

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I was talking to a CBS News correspondent the other day about the quality of the "Evening News," and the conversation turned to the notion, popular among media critics, that the "Evening News" has declined in quality over the years. The correspondent said he believed that the show has actually improved, in large part because journalists have learned to tell stories more clearly and efficiently over time.

To test the theory, I've dug up an episode of the "Evening News" from Nov. 18th, 1964. The anchor is Walter Cronkite, and the top story is an announcement by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara of a large reduction in military bases. Bill Plante – who you can still see on the "Evening News" today – offers a report from the Brooklyn Navy Yard. And the first commercial you'll see is for Parliament cigarettes -- apparently, tobacco tastes best when the filter's recessed. (You'll love the jingle.)

Anyway, have a look at the show by clicking on the video box above. I've also included a link to Tuesday's episode of the "Evening News" for comparison's sake. Decide for yourself if the show has improved or declined over the years.

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Last year, Nielsen Research reported that the State of the Union address roped in 42 million viewers across eight networks -- ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, CNN, FNC, MSNBC, and Telemundo. It was a slight increase from the previous year's viewership, which was about 39 million.

A single network raked in 33 million viewers alone that night -- but it wasn't for the president's address. Those 33 million were watching what was on during the hour before the speech – Fox's "American Idol." A lead in show with that many viewers meant that Fox won the day for SOTU viewership.

That also meant the Washington Post's TV critic, (and pretty much every other TV critic in America) Lisa de Moraes had a barrel of laughs in the paper later that week, noting that while "Bush clocked his biggest numbers on the Fox broadcast network, that's not to say he did such a hot job retaining the 'Idol' audience." According to the stats she had, Bush averaged about 9.5 million viewers on Fox ("a lousy 29 percent retention rate, which would get him canceled faster than he could say 'Emily's Reasons Why Not' if he were a TV series," she writes.) By the second half-hour, the audience was down to 6.9 viewers.

In other words,(and this may come as a bit of a shock) the State of the Union address is not a ratings grabber.

Perhaps this year, as everyone (well, everyone in Washington) highlights the president's record-low approval ratings and Congress' growing frustration with the Iraq war plan, we'll see an upswing in viewership. Or maybe, a skeptical public is one that would rather tune out.

"American Idol," is on again this year during the hour before the speech. Re-runs of "Sex and the City" start at 9 pm (same time the speech starts) on TBS.

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"A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States!” That's what the Drudge Report exclaimed on Jan. 18, way back in 1998.

And we all know what happened after that.

What's interesting for our purposes, of course, is the media frenzy (of pretty much epic proportions) that followed. If you're not familiar with all the dirty details, take a look at a piece yesterday by David Rapp of American Heritage magazine. Rapp takes a look back on the genesis of the scoop that would take "news reporting out of the confines of the newsroom and blast it into cyberspace."

After all, this marked the first time that a major news story was breaking on the still-young Internet.

In that vein, we dug up another little piece of news history. Former CBS News correspondent Eric Engberg (who has appeared here on Public Eye before) did a story for the "Evening News" a few days after the Drudge story broke back in January 1998. He examined how the media was handling a huge story that was emerging in an entirely different fashion than they'd dealt with before.

As Engberg explains in the piece, the unfolding of this story was a case in which "technology may have overrun old-fashioned editorial caution. Newsweek magazine, which had the Lewinsky story first, decided to withhold it to do more checking. But the magazine's hand was forced when scandal monger Matt Drudge outed the story on his computer Web site."

You can click on the video player above to watch the piece, which aired on the "Evening News" Jan. 24, 1998.

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Okay, okay, we get it – as we hurtle our way through ever-flowing lives of instant gratification, we want everything on-demand. Our appetites are so voracious and our attention spans so short these days, you have to wonder whether Apple’s decision to unveil its much-anticipated iPhone months before it hits the market will create tongue-wagging demand or instead be the cause of impatient riots in the streets of Manhattan.

We even serve up our history lessons before they actually take place. And while it’s not unusual to try and figure out the magnitude of the events we’re caught up in, sometimes we can get a little ahead of ourselves.

Take the obsession over a president’s “legacy,” for example. It isn’t really anything new. We’re always trying to figure out the pecking order in our pantheon of leaders, to take an initial stab at judging records and play fun little parlor games. But isn’t all the speculation mostly useless as a measure of historical judgment? Don’t we need some perspective before we draw our conclusions? Apparently not, considering all the chatter about legacy, especially on the cable news channels.

We’re reminded of the desire to project ourselves forward on days like today, when President Bush’s forthcoming speech on Iraq is eating up the majority of airtime. We’ve seen the usual posturing pundits debating the differences between “surge” and “escalate” and predicting the political impact of tonight’s address. We’ve also seen some historians pop up to talk about how this speech, and this president will go down in history.

The war in Iraq is certainly dominating the national discussion in the nation at the moment, which is entirely appropriate -- even long overdue. With Democrats in power on the Hill and firm evidence of the public’s unhappiness with the war’s course, tonight’s speech is obviously an important news event. But the pundits may want to take the longer view.

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A lot of sad news occurred while we were gone, but there was one event that we wanted to give a special mention here: The passing of former CBS president Frank Stanton, who died on Dec. 24th at the age of 98. Stanton will be remembered as a fighter for first amendment rights and a staunch advocate for the journalists who worked for him. Here's some background about Stanton's most well known free speech battle:

He defied a U.S. House of Representatives subpoena for outtakes of a CBS News documentary in a move that solidified his status as the leading defender of broadcast journalism's equal status with print under the First Amendment.

Likening them to print reporters' notebooks, he told the full U.S. House in front of a television audience that he would not turn over outtakes from "CBS Reports: 'The Selling of the Pentagon,'" a 1971 report critical of the defense department.

It was a risk that could have put him behind bars, but after two days of hearings, House members in a roll call voted 226-181 not to hold CBS and its president in contempt.

You can read more on Stanton here, and check out a great "audio autobiography" as well. Says "60 Minutes" creator Don Hewitt: "If broadcasting had a patron saint, it would be Frank Stanton."

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As we noted earlier, NBC has made an editorial decision to begin describing the ongoing violence in Iraq as a “civil war.” NBC’s cable channel, MSNBC, has been discussing the change all day but it’s hardly the first time the situation has been described as such. I’ll leave the debate over semantics to other forums. But this turn of phrase is already being touted as a turning point. It’s kind of hard not to wonder who will be the first to call this a “Cronkite Moment.”

That would be tempting, considering all the hot and heavy debate over use of the term “civil war.” Just one problem – this war has already seen its “Cronkite Moment.” In fact, it’s seen a few of them. Remember when Congressman John Murtha first called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq? A Cronkite Moment. When ABC anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were severely injured in an attack? A Cronkite Moment. When conservative icon William F. Buckley pronounced Iraq a failure? You guessed it, a Cronkite Moment.

Of course, Walter Cronkite himself has provided that moment by repeatedly voicing his view that the U.S. should get out of Iraq. We’ve written about what it takes to have a true Cronkite Moment and discussed whether it was as momentous as we’ve come to believe. One thing we can say with certainty is that even if a true Cronkite moment is no longer possible, the phrase has taken on a life of its own.

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In American politics, there are certain rhetorical legacies that its characters leave behind -- “Ask not what your country can do for you…” “I did not have sexual relations with that woman…” you know the drill. In the wake of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation, there is one quote that everyone seems to be recalling today:

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

Even the president recalled it with a chuckle as he announced the nomination of Robert Gates to replace Rumsfeld: “Don once famously said, ‘There are known knowns; there are known unknowns; and there are unknown unknowns,’” said Bush. “Well, Mr. Secretary, here is a known known: Your service has made America stronger, and made America a safer nation. You will be missed, and I wish you and Joyce all the best in the years to come.”

Recollection of everyone’s favorite Rumsfeldism is clearly not lost on anyone who’s covering Rumsfeld’s departure.

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One of the more frequent gripes about President Bush and his relationship with the press during his first term was the infrequency of his press conferences. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, Bush’s pressers were the most infrequent of “any president in the television age.” But, you -- you perceptive media consumer -- might have noticed that Bush has been holding far more press conferences during this term. Well, PEJ noticed too, so they took the next logical step in obtaining archival White House statistics -- they contacted CBS News’ Mark Knoller and yielded this:

In the 21 months since his second inaugural, Bush has already held 15 solo press conferences. Last year, 2005, he held nine – more than double the number he averaged each of his first four years. In 2006, he’s already held six – including one in each of the last five months. At this rate his second term would not only easily surpass his first-term total but equal it in two years.

PEJ offers their own projections on the reasons for the increase, suggesting a combination of the coming mid-term elections, sagging poll numbers, negative Iraq news, and perhaps the arrivals of new press secretary Tony Snow and chief of staff Josh Bolten as responsible factors. We asked Knoller what he thinks is behind the uptick.

"Like most of his recent predecessors, President Bush does news conferences when it suits his purposes, not those of the press," said Knoller. "It's a myth to think that he's in any way scared of the press or our questions. And he has shown increasingly that he enjoys the intellectual give and take - and needling reporters about their style, clothing or questioning."

"To the extent there have been more regular press conferences in recent months, you can credit the calendar. The midterm elections loom large and he has much at stake. More than anything, he wants Republicans to remain in control of the House and Senate during the final two years of his presidency. And he uses the opening statement at his press conferences to try to score points for his policies. Answering questions for the remainder of the hour is the price he's willing to pay."

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