Even though the weekend of Nov. 4 and 5 preceded a fascinating mid-term election, it still qualified as a typically slow weekend for news. That is the only explanation for the outrageous play that many news organizations gave to the Military Times editorial calling for President Bush to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The lead story in Saturday’s San Francisco Chronicle was a breathless report, complete with excerpts from the editorial, about the importance of this condemnation by “an influential chain of newspapers considered must-reading by military forces from California to Baghdad.” Forget the fact that most Chronicle readers never had heard of the Military Times group, the Army Times, the Navy Times, the Air Force Times and the Marine Corps Times.

NPR’s “Weekend Edition on Saturday” devoted a large segment to the report, as did the BBC news carried on many NPR stations. (Disclosure: Bob Hodierne, senior managing editor of the Military Times papers and the spokesman on both radio broadcasts, is an old friend who used to work with me at the San Jose Mercury news.)

An article on Slate called the piece “a fairly astonishing editorial.” But then Slate pointed out:

“These weekly newspapers are not official organs of the U.S. military. They’re published by a private corporation, the Military Times Media Group, which is, in turn, owned by the Gannett Corp. This is why the editorial is only ‘fairly’ astonishing. (If Stars & Stripes, which is the official newspaper, had called for a secretary of defense to step down, it would be prelude to insurrection.)”  Note: It’s actually the Gannett Co.

As Slate points out, these are “essentially trade papers.” Their circulation is about 250,000, CNN reports. (Incidentally, that’s less than the Chronicle’s.) What’s the big deal?

I’m assuming that was the view of editors at the New York Times and the Washington Post. As far as I can tell, the only Times reference to the editorial was two paragraphs far down in a Sunday political story, when Rep. John P. Murtha (D., Pa.) says that the editorial is important. The Post gave it one paragraph Sunday in a national digest on Page A16.

Some days always will be slow, but might it be time to worry when some organizations let the lack of other news distort a minor story?