I may have been the only person watching NBC network news the night Tim Russert misspelled Iraq. At least I never saw any mention of it in the press at the time, nor in the obituaries and tributes that were published after his death on June 13.

The misspelling was months before Russert’s death. On his signature white clipboard, Tim Russert printed out what he said would be a key issue in the presidential campaign: I-R-A-K. Well, he caught and corrected the boot to the accepted spelling in the U.S.

Still, the memory of that episode is haunting, particularly so because of the way the “Gotcha” mentality of the press and political pundits pounces on the slightest miscue, mispronunciation or misspelling by any one in the public spotlight.

And never lets go.

Anyone want to bet that the obituaries of Dan Quayle will not mention his misspelling of potato when he was vice president?

The press is more forgiving of misspelling, mispronunciation and other shortcomings when the sinner is a journalist. Try to find “corrections” on the Web site of your local newspaper or broadcast station. A search for “corrections” almost always leads you to the state prison system and not to reporting mistakes.

Contrast the press focus on the poor grammar, mis-speaking or faulty spelling of public officials with how the press treats its own. After all, it used to be that a reporter’s copy would have to pass through two or three hands before being published or broadcast – the copy was cleaned up, corrections were made, holes filled, etc. (That’s less the case today, of course, with staff reductions getting rid of the hands that helped package better material for the reader or viewer.)

Tim Russert and I-R-A-K came to mind when Sen. Barrack Obama named Sen. Joe Biden as his Democratic Party running mate. While I applauded the choice, I dreaded the predictable news media coverage about Biden talking too much, about Biden on occasion saying something he maybe shouldn’t have said – you know, all the criteria the media consider significant when it comes to choosing a President.

One reason we have so much secrecy in government today is that the nature of our news coverage – obsessed with flip flopping and minor mis-steps – puts the public official at high risk for sharing his thoughts.

So far news coverage of the Presidential campaign recalls the gloomy line of A.J. Liebling (1904-1963) about his New Yorker column of press criticism: “One of the things that puts me off doing The Wayward Press for years at a time, in fact, is its inevitable repetitiousness – given the same opportunity, newspapers always do the same wrong thing.”