You answered your own question with the Washington Post article. But there was substantial criticism when Bush unveiled the Vision. I'll point to this commentary which mentioned the criticism, which started even BEFORE Bush made the announcement:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/119/1
"We saw the modern media version of this game recently when rumors emerged that President Bush was about to unveil a new space policy that called for a return to the Moon and an eventual human mission to Mars. Media reports quickly declared that this plan would cost a trillion dollars or even more. That number was widely repeated within the modern media echo chamber, often by supposedly reputable sources. It may have already done substantial damage to the Bush space policy, creating public opposition to what is perceived as a massively expensive program and scaring away any possible supporters."
The article refers to a number of mass media articles about the Vision that were highly critical. I actually think that they were unfairly critical, but NASA didn't get it easy, if only because their credibility had been badly damaged after Columbia and the hard-hitting Columbia Accident Investigation Board report.
When Griffin unveiled ESAS, there was also substantial mass media criticism of the plan. It's not hard to find examples in major newspapers.
And I mentioned Congressional Budget Office and Government Accountability Office reports critical of Constellation. Go to their respective websites and do a simple search and you will find them.
In contrast, a decade ago I was appalled by the superficial treatment that MirCorp received from the media. Most media reports simply repeated MirCorp's press releases, and usually failed to note that the previous press release had said something different. There was a fawning Wall Street Journal article on MirCorp, which cited a KPMG assessment that Mir was worth something like $2 billion. Nobody did an overall assessment piece about the company's stated business strategy, and how unrealistic it was. (Well, there was this one guy...)
