In my naivety, I looked to this morning’s New York Times to fill in the details of the Cheney hunting accident. More fool I.

In an article that concentrated as much on the jokes of television comics as the substance, Elisabeth Bumiller took expert hunting advice from the following: two people who were on the hunt with Cheney, and Cheney chum and former Wyoming senator Alan Simpson. Is it any surprise that they all blamed the victim, Harry Whittington, and not Cheney?

Other sources do much better. Knight Ridder’s account makes clear that it is a fundamental rule of hunting that the shooter is responsible for knowing what is in his line of fire. The San Francisco Chronicle interviews a disinterested expert, who confirms that basic rules of hunting safety were ignored.

Of course, I learned all this yesterday from blogs that covered the story far more thoroughly than any of today’s papers.  Firedoglake was particularly stellar.

The one consolation is that the story that has real legs, the seeming cover-up of the accident, is being covered everywhere. Lots of history to show that the cover-up is more important than the initial story.