Slow news days are to the media what droughts are to farmers; and there’s not much either can do about their problem. Saturdays are bad and Sundays are worse, so you’ll see junior anchors sitting in for the network moguls and hear someone besides the regular kings of the airwaves on the radio. There are exceptions, there are rules, and then there’s the fickle coming-on of a slow news day that puts even the wonks to sleep.

And then you get a vice president shooting someone in the face. Cheney’s February 11th hunting accident was a Godsend for the newsrooms and cartoonists who were bored stiff with the stale Hurricane Katrina political fallout. What they found seemed to be a regular hunting accident involving highly irregular people.

The first story on the wire was “Cheney Accidentally Shoots Fellow Hunter,” carried by the Associated Press, distributed on the afternoon of the 12th. The initial stories worked one of two angles: the condition of Harry Whittington, who was shot, or the hunting accident itself. The Vice President immediately gained a soft spot in the hearts of millions of hunters around the country who understand how accidents afield can easily happen. Many of them know of someone hurt in a hunting accident and most despise the media for their last decade of blasting headlines about “assault weapons” and “gun bans”. Cheney gained red-state compassion, and with a political climate where compassion for the Bush Administration is a good way to get fired, journalists couldn’t work that angle.

So the bloggers and a few of the bolder journalists latched onto the “a beer or two” angle. Was Cheney drunk? Lawrence O’Donnell blogged: “Every lawyer I've talked to assumes Cheney was too drunk to talk to the cops after the shooting,” wholly indicative of the speculation that took root when the normal “hunting accident” story wasn’t exciting enough on a slow news day. What lawyers? What are their names, where are their quotes, and never mind that an assumption is not damnable evidence. At last check, assumptions are not admissible in court - but they are usually good for incurring a libel case.

Their theories abound, but a theory is just that: a hypothesis that has not been (fully, if at all) proven. And without proof, such as breathalyzer and blood toxicology reports, making accusations is dangerous. So the conspiracy theorists started crying of foul cover-ups, and the mass media needed a new angle to wring as much ink from the incident as possible.

The owner of the now infamous ranch that played home to the shooting, Katharine Armstrong, told Cheney that she intended to talk to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, and no one made any move to stop her. The Caller-Times website scooped the Associated Press and every other newswire service...ensuring their wrath in a cutthroat market on a slow weekend.

Enter the professionals talking of “cover-ups” and the slowness with which word got to the press (recall that the Caller-Times posted a story early the next day). The accident happened in the late afternoon/early evening of the 11th. The AP had a news blurb out by the next afternoon, and the process of writers trying to pay the rent by exploiting the misfortune of others (I say as a practicing, paid journalist) began. Why wasn’t word spread sooner? Why wasn’t there a press conference?

Ill-founded snap judgments are suicide in politics, as is talking off the cuff in dynamic situations—but not in journalism, where a retraction on Page 7 and a simple reprimand are standard fallout. Whittington was in the hospital with doctors who were busy assessing his condition when the news services wanted to have a tell-all press conference with hard-and-fast facts that were still being collected. There is nothing to tell until the story is known, and the story was still developing when the press wanted to already have it on the wires. The desire to be first is the driving force behind a competitive, cut-throat industry and often overshadows the reality and integrity of the news cycle.

Apparently, taking the time to gather and verify the facts is unacceptable when a local paper has scooped the “professionals.” So there must be a conspiracy—and woe is Katharine Armstrong for telling the Caller-Times and not the AP, as she has drawn ire for doing. The self-important posturing of the national news industry is nothing more than simpering vanity. They of all parties should know the value of checking facts and understanding the story (who stood where? What is Whittington’s condition?) before rushing to the inkwell.

But a look at the amount and nature of the retractions buried deep in the New York Times, USA Today, and others, shows that being first is a higher priority than accuracy.

And when the facts came out—argue their accuracy and implications all you want—it looks like a case of an old man using poor judgment (“he turned to shoot a bird behind him,” many sources wrote—that’s a cardinal sin in hunting) causing a standard hunting accident. Poor judgment was also at the heart of Bill Clinton’s impeachment and Ted Kennedy’s murder of Mary Jo Kopeckne. If you look at the speed with which those parties released information, and the transparency thereof, Cheney should be the media’s golden child. But that wouldn’t fly amongst the flock of headlines penned against the Bush Administration.

Whether Cheney was drunk or not, hunting legally or not, is an über-rich white Republican getting away with assault or not, are cases for different arguments. The point remains: feeding is fierce on slow news days, and the big boys don’t take kindly to getting scooped.