Well, gee, that's funny.
PBS' show Frontline did an excellent exposé on how the mainstream media got it WRONG on the Iraq War. In the documentary, there is a great focus on just how the New York Times and Judy Miller et al were complicit in drumming up the support for war.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newswar/part1/wmd.htmlYou can watch the documentary and see for yourself.
Here are some snippets:
Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller has come to symbolize the media's credulous reporting on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Miller has been criticized for pre-war stories, including at least one which relied on Iraqi defectors opposed to Saddam, and her embedded reporting on the ultimately fruitless hunt for weapons after the invasion.
(snip)
Two months later, the editors of The New York Times published an editors' note assessing the paper's Iraq coverage. "In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged," the editors wrote. "Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged -- or failed to emerge." The notes did not name names, but most of the specific stories cited were written or co-written by Miller.
Daniel Okrent, then-public editor of the The New York Times, went further in his column on the paper's mea culpa. His summary could have applied to many other media outlets: "Some of the Times coverage in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq was credulous; much of it was inappropriately italicized by lavish front-page display and heavy-breathing headlines; and several fine articles ... that challenged information in the faulty stories were played as quietly as a lullaby."
According to the New York Review of Books' Michael Massing (subscription required), the Washington Post's coverage of Colin Powell's February 2003 speech before the United Nations fell into a similar pattern: front-page stories and editorials praised the presentation, while a skeptical article by Joby Warrick ran on page A29. A month later, two articles by Post writer Walter Pincus (one co-authored by Dana Milbank) received similar placement, on pages A17 and A13.
(snip)
Some media was more dogged in challenging the administration line on WMD. The Times editors' note singled out newspaper chain Knight Ridder for praise. Indeed, Knight Ridder reporters Warren Stroebel and Jonathan Landay received an award from the Senate Press Gallery for their work. But Knight Ridder, which was acquired by rival McClatchy in 2006, did not own a New York or Washington paper, and its reporting did not carry the heft of the Times' or the Post's with the general public.
(snip)
New York Times military reporter Michael Gordon, who co-authored with Judith Miller the controversial Sept. 8, 2002 story about Iraq's nuclear program, revisited the topic in a more critical light in January 2003. Times writers Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker wrote on the Pentagon's internal intelligence group in October 2002. Also that month, Times intelligence reporter James Risen cast doubt on the assertion that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague, Czech Republic.
Perhaps the New York Times judgment on drumming up support for a failure of a war are the same as their endorsement.
We shall see.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
