Damning with faint praise (con't)

Another gem from Howard Kurtz's decade-in-review:

It was complicated and dull, yes -- much like the year-long effort at health-care reform that finally passed the Senate on Christmas Eve. I would credit the media with a valiant attempt to explain and examine this legislative morass, even to the point of declaring that the high-decibel charges about death panels were bogus.

Ohmygod!  The media "even" went so far as to tell readers that right-wing claims about "death panels" that they were hyping weren't true?  Well, then, let's give them a medal!  

This is the state of modern political journalism: The nation's most prominent media critic thinks that when reporters note the falsity of "high-decibel charges" they report, they deserve praise for their extraordinary work.