Lessons to learn from "Buying the War"
In response to last night's Bill Moyers' epsisode "Buying the War, CBS's Mark Knoller says Moyers "got it wrong" concerning the questioning that occured at a March, 2003 press conference shortly before the invasion of Iraq. In one instance Knoller defends a fellow CBS reporter:
If you watched the Moyers episode, his actual point was that press conferences were scripted and the press just played along, raising their hands like actors in a play when they knew there was an approved list of who would be called upon. It was a pathetic performance, probably the lowest point for American journalism since 1898.
It's important to understand Moyers' conclusion: nothing much has changed. The reporters and pundits who were horribly, horribly wrong by and large do not recognize that fact. The worst offenders, like Judy Miller, wouldn't even talk to Moyers. The Beltway pundits and reporters, as a "Gang of 500," live in a different America and frankly the worst offenders have no business still being on the air or printed after making such egregious errors in judgement and fact. It's called professionalism. Regular people get canned when they screw up badly; Beltway pundits seem to get book deals.
The bright spot was the performance of Knight-Ridder reporters who went around official sources and talked to the intelligence officers and others who were actually doing the work on weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda. Moyers suggests that it's not a coincidence that being "outside the Beltway bubble" actually helped Knight-Ridder, although it's small consolation seeing that the reporters who got the story right didn't exactly get much play in the run-up to war. (One might note that McClatchy, which has done great work on Purge-gate, purchased Knight-Ridder and is also the minority owner of The Seattle Times.)
Is there a lesson for regional and local outlets? Probably the same lesson that all Americans should learn: be suspicious of what comes out of AP, New York Times and Washington Post wire services, and contrast it with foreign and other domestic services. Many, many newspapers and local television stations passed on the wrong information to the American public, and they need to understand how that happened and work to avoid doing it again. Lives literally depend on it, and being local outlets does not absolve them from responsibility for the content they carry.
It is now obvious to anyone who cares to look that propaganda and misinformation were used in a blatant manner against the American public, and that far too often media outlets were either dupes or willing participants. It might be asking a lot to request a local newspaper or television station be aware of faulty information in wire service reports, but they will do the public a great service if they pay greater attention to possible errors and propaganda. And really, when it comes to the run-up to the Iraq invasion, anyone who was paying attention at all had to have serious questions about the veracity of administration claims.
If you missed "Buying the War," you can view it on-line at PBS.
My colleague Bill Plante challenged Mr. Bush to present hard evidence to back up his claims of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.I guess maybe Knoller couldn't know Atrios would post the questions asked from a White House transcript of that press conference. For example:
Bill Plante.I'm not exactly sure I would call that a "challenge." There's a question in there somewhere, I suppose, but notice how it is almost expressing a fealty to the administration in its very formulation? There may be poor, misguided people out there (the dirty hippies!) so we better tell them what is what.
Q Mr. President, to a lot of people, it seems that war is probably inevitable, because many people doubt -- most people, I would guess -- that Saddam Hussein will ever do what we are demanding that he do, which is disarm. And if war is inevitable, there are a lot of people in this country -- as much as half, by polling standards -- who agree that he should be disarmed, who listen to you say that you have the evidence, but who feel they haven't seen it, and who still wonder why blood has to be shed if he hasn't attacked us.
If you watched the Moyers episode, his actual point was that press conferences were scripted and the press just played along, raising their hands like actors in a play when they knew there was an approved list of who would be called upon. It was a pathetic performance, probably the lowest point for American journalism since 1898.
It's important to understand Moyers' conclusion: nothing much has changed. The reporters and pundits who were horribly, horribly wrong by and large do not recognize that fact. The worst offenders, like Judy Miller, wouldn't even talk to Moyers. The Beltway pundits and reporters, as a "Gang of 500," live in a different America and frankly the worst offenders have no business still being on the air or printed after making such egregious errors in judgement and fact. It's called professionalism. Regular people get canned when they screw up badly; Beltway pundits seem to get book deals.
The bright spot was the performance of Knight-Ridder reporters who went around official sources and talked to the intelligence officers and others who were actually doing the work on weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda. Moyers suggests that it's not a coincidence that being "outside the Beltway bubble" actually helped Knight-Ridder, although it's small consolation seeing that the reporters who got the story right didn't exactly get much play in the run-up to war. (One might note that McClatchy, which has done great work on Purge-gate, purchased Knight-Ridder and is also the minority owner of The Seattle Times.)
Is there a lesson for regional and local outlets? Probably the same lesson that all Americans should learn: be suspicious of what comes out of AP, New York Times and Washington Post wire services, and contrast it with foreign and other domestic services. Many, many newspapers and local television stations passed on the wrong information to the American public, and they need to understand how that happened and work to avoid doing it again. Lives literally depend on it, and being local outlets does not absolve them from responsibility for the content they carry.
It is now obvious to anyone who cares to look that propaganda and misinformation were used in a blatant manner against the American public, and that far too often media outlets were either dupes or willing participants. It might be asking a lot to request a local newspaper or television station be aware of faulty information in wire service reports, but they will do the public a great service if they pay greater attention to possible errors and propaganda. And really, when it comes to the run-up to the Iraq invasion, anyone who was paying attention at all had to have serious questions about the veracity of administration claims.
If you missed "Buying the War," you can view it on-line at PBS.
