The question has been asked here before but it bears repeating. Where were the Connecticut media for 20-some years while the state’s attorney general asserted repeatedly (and falsely) that he had served in Vietnam? Why did it take an out-of-state newspaper to expose the reality that Dick Blumenthal had only served stateside in the Marine Corps Reserves after several draft deferments?

Blumenthal has enjoyed some of the most adulatory press of any public official in the state. And he is assiduous in seeking coverage. It has been said before that, unless Chuck Schumer is visiting, the most dangerous piece of real estate in Connecticut is that little space between Blumenthal and a TV camera.

Inasmuch as he’s always been acutely aware of his public image, how could such a man stand idly by while media outlets printed flattering information about him that he knew was inaccurate? How could he, in his own words at yesterday’s press conference, “misspeak” about his service “on a few occasions” and the news media let him get away with it? Most of those “occasions,” by the way, were gatherings of veterans’ groups.

Part of the answer can be found on a segment on Morning Joe on MSNBC. Co-host Mika Brzezinski, who worked as a TV journalist in Connecticut for six years in the 1990s, let slip an admission many skeptical media observers in this state have suspected ever since Blumenthal replaced Joe Lieberman in the AG’s office: she likes Blumenthal. Indeed, Brzezinski made it sound as if she and her husband, fellow TV reporter James Hoffer, were friends of Dick.

“After I read the [New York Times] article, I felt crushed for him,” Brzezinski confessed. “Because my husband and I had known him as reporters in Connecticut for years and years.” Brzezinski added that Blumenthal “has done a lot of really good work.”

Why would Brzezinski feel “crushed” and not something more — such as “shocked” or “outraged?” Because it’s pretty clear that Brzezinski, like dozens of other reporters in the Nutmeg State, thought Blumenthal was a man of integrity, a latter-day judicial saint dedicated to the betterment of his fellow Nutmeggers.

Truth be told, for a journalist there’s a lot to like about Blumenthal. As the head of essentially the state’s largest law firm — one that has grown tremendously in size since he took it over — Blumenthal sues everyone in sight. And his targets are the same as those on the hit lists of lefties and journalists: polluters; monopolistic public utilities; predatory lenders; and corporations that need to lay off union labor. And it often makes for great copy.

Unfortunately, it has also caused a lot of companies to flee the state. In 2007, the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute ranked Blumenthal as the nation’s worst attorney general, which his possible GOP opponent, former Rep. Rob Simmons, cited in charging Blumenthal with “supporting meritless, politically-driven lawsuits.”

I generally liked dealing with Blumenthal because he was accessible. Whenever I contacted the AG to interview him for a story, he almost always returned my calls. And I was only a reporter for a small weekly in the rural northwest corner of the state. I can only imagine the kind of access Blumenthal gave his media admirers in Hartford and the Gold Coast of Fairfield County.

Blumenthal was always charming and attentive and never failed to give me a good nugget of information here or a quotable sound byte there. Clearly, he knows how to talk to reporters and he actively cultivates their good graces — if not their actual friendship.

The point is that this kind of attention and access buys a powerful public official a certain amount of media goodwill. Unfortunately, it can also cause journalists to forget their obligation to be skeptical of what any public official says, especially when the official in question is a Democrat who courts them, is a staunch defender of the First Amendment and slays the dragons journalists love to hate.