The Boston Globe used its front page on June 7 to highlight an article -- based on Sen. John Kerry's (D-MA) newly released military and education records -- that emphasized Kerry's mediocre college grades. But the Globe buried a second article, which used the records to further discredit attacks on Kerry's military service that occurred during the 2004 presidential campaign, on an inside page. While attacks on Kerry's service had already been largely discredited, the revelation that his full military records provide no new information about his service definitively proved the baselessness of smears by the anti-Kerry group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (now Swift Vets and POWs for Truth).

The Globe's article about Kerry's grades at Yale University -- which found that Kerry's academic performance was “on par” with President Bush's -- ran on the Globe's front page (A1). The report that Kerry's decision to sign Standard Form 180, and thereby fully release his military records, provided a “lack of any substantive new material about Kerry's military career,” ran on Page A7. The demand that Kerry sign the form, even though many of these military records were posted on Kerry's campaign website, was a point of attack by right-wing pundits who besmirched his service during the 2004 campaign.

On the June 7 edition of Fox News Live, anchor Brigitte Quinn noted the Globe's finding that the military records were “mostly a duplication” of what Kerry had previously released, but failed to mention the Swift Boat Veterans' attacks against Kerry during the campaign, only noting his assertion that he had refused to release the records earlier because he didn't want to “kowtow” to “the same partisan operatives who were lying about my record on a daily basis.” Quinn then noted that Kerry's grade-point average at Yale was “virtually identical” to Bush's, even though Kerry was portrayed as “the more intellectual of the presidential candidates.”