Sounds like the Old Gray Lady needs help. We should lend a hand.
Write letters to the editor calling them on every last one of these type idiotic reportings and reminding them of the lives lost because of the last time they reported junk news
As someone who's been in newspapers for more than a quarter-century, the hardest thing for me to explain to non-journalists is the so-called "Chinese wall" between news reporters and the editorial page. That's understandable -- most normal businesses don't have key departments under orders not to work together. But having said that, the New York Times has an editorial on the key issue of a possible war with Iran that takes this separation to a new and kind of ridiculous level.
Otherwise preoccupied, I haven't been able to write much this week about what I see as the biggest outrage in journalism in the last four years, and that is the stunning willingness of major news orgs like the New York Times and Washington Post -- having apparently learned nothing when they were fooled by the Bush White House on the reasons for invading Iraq -- to let the same folks get away with the same tricks to foment a much more dangerous conflict with Iran.
In fact, the same reporters are falling for it -- specifically Michael Gordon of the New York Times.
As Editor and Publisher reported this weekend:
Saturday’s New York Times features an article, posted at the top of its Web site late Friday, that suggests very strongly that Iran is supplying the “deadliest weapon aimed at American troops” in Iraq. The author notes, “Any assertion of an Iranian contribution to attacks on Americans in Iraq is both politically and diplomatically volatile.”
What is the source of this volatile information? Nothing less than “civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies.”
Sound pretty convincing? Well, almost all the sources in the story are unnamed. It also may be worth noting that the author is Michael R. Gordon, the same Times reporter who, on his own, or with Judith Miller, wrote some of the key, and badly misleading or downright inaccurate, articles about Iraqi WMDs in the run-up to the 2003 invasion.
It got worse. The Washington Post picked on the same thinly sourced story the next day, and a large group of reporters then willingly took place in a bizarre "off-the-record" briefing by three military and military-intelligence officials, in Baghdad the next day. The news orgs were happy to grant anonymity to these military officials, even though one of them (Gen. William Caldwell, as later reported) meets with journalists on-the-record all the time. The officials were given a free pass to use the exact same tactics that spread so much misinformation about Iraq four years earlier.
The officials today in Baghdad who blamed Iran for killing Americans said they decided to speak "on the condition of anonymity so the trio's explosives expert and analyst who would normally not speak to reporters could provide more information. The analyst's exact job description was not revealed to reporters. Reporters' cell phones were taken before the briefing, and the officials did not allow reporters to record or videotape the proceedings....
Freedom of the press also means freedom of thought. There is nothing that would have prevented the news orgs from boycotting the Baghdad event -- it would have been the reasonable and responsible thing to do, given the track record of the sources.
They also would have had the freedom to report the event, but with the type of skepticism voiced by the UK's Independent:
The allegations by senior but unnamed US officials in Baghdad and Washington are bizarre. The US has been fighting a Sunni insurgency in Iraq since 2003 that is deeply hostile to Iran.
This morning, another voice weighed in that was critical of the reporting that began Saturday on the front page of the New York Times. It was, you guessed it by now, the editorial page of the New York Times.
Its editorial said in part:
Consider last weekend’s supersecret briefing in Baghdad by a group of American military officials whose names could not be revealed to the voters who are paying for this war with their taxes and their children’s blood. The briefers tried to prove the White House’s case that Iran is shipping deadly weapons, including armor-piercing explosives, to Shiite militias in Iraq.
Unlike Colin Powell’s infamous prewar presentation on Iraq at the United Nations, this briefing had actual weapons to look at. And perhaps in time, the administration will be able to prove conclusively that the weapons came from arms factories in Iran.
But the officials offered no evidence to support their charge that “the highest levels of the Iranian government” had authorized smuggling these weapons into Iraq for use against American forces. Nor could they adequately explain why they had been sitting on this urgent evidence since 2004. The only thing that was not surprising was the refusal of any of the briefers to allow their names to be published. Mr. Powell is probably wondering why he didn’t insist on the same deal.
The tone of high outrage is understandable on one hand (it is right, after all) but on the other hand comes off as more than a little hypocritical. It was none other than the top editors on the news side of the New York Times -- not mentioned or criticized here, of course -- who had the power to at least slow down this charade before it got started, by spiking Michael Gordon's unsourced story in the first place.
In fact, as Raw Story pointed out, the Michael Gordon story appears to violate the paper's anonymous source policy that was adopted in the wake of the Iraq coverage fiasco:
According to the confidential news sources policy, the New York Times has "long observed the principle of identifying our sources by name and title or, when that is not possible, explaining why we consider them authoritative, why they are speaking to us and why they have demanded confidentiality."
The story on Saturday contained no such explanation. And for the Times to run that article and then complain three days later about this crusade by anonymous officials is the height of institutional hypocrisy. A newspaper can take responsibility for its actions, the same way that a person can.
If someone had a problem like alcoholism, should they go out, two days after a bender, and write an essay on the perils of demon rum? Or should they step up to the plate, and pledge to stop drinking altogether.
I'd like to see the unfortunate events of the last few days serve as a kind of a wake-up call. People in the media -- even those who nomally compete -- need to talk to each other, and develop some industrywide standards and channels of communications, to make sure that this type of shameful media manipulation by the Bush administration doesn't work again.
There's an old saying in the newspaper business, or at least in Texas, that goes, fool me once, shame on you...uh....we won't get fooled again.
Seriously people, don't get fooled again.
It's not just your reputation.
It's a matter of life and death.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
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