"NEWSPAPER OF RECORD" COMES CLEAN
The Times and Iraq

From the New York Times courtesy of Tom Tomorrow:

Over the last year this newspaper has shone the bright light of hindsight on decisions that led the United States into Iraq. We have examined the failings of American and allied intelligence, especially on the issue of Iraq's weapons and possible Iraqi connections to international terrorists. We have studied the allegations of official gullibility and hype. It is past time we turned the same light on ourselves.

In doing so — reviewing hundreds of articles written during the prelude to war and into the early stages of the occupation — we found an enormous amount of journalism that we are proud of. In most cases, what we reported was an accurate reflection of the state of our knowledge at the time, much of it painstakingly extracted from intelligence agencies that were themselves dependent on sketchy information. And where those articles included incomplete information or pointed in a wrong direction, they were later overtaken by more and stronger information. That is how news coverage normally unfolds.

But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.

The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on "regime change" in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks.

And here's a pretty good analysis of how bias and distortion tend to work in the corporate media:

On Sept. 8, 2002, the lead article of the paper was headlined "U.S. Says Hussein Intensified Quest for A-Bomb Parts." That report concerned the aluminum tubes that the administration advertised insistently as components for the manufacture of nuclear weapons fuel. The claim came not from defectors but from the best American intelligence sources available at the time. Still, it should have been presented more cautiously. There were hints that the usefulness of the tubes in making nuclear fuel was not a sure thing, but the hints were buried deep, 1,700 words into a 3,600-word article. Administration officials were allowed to hold forth at length on why this evidence of Iraq's nuclear intentions demanded that Saddam Hussein be dislodged from power: "The first sign of a `smoking gun,' they argue, may be a mushroom cloud."

Five days later, The Times reporters learned that the tubes were in fact a subject of debate among intelligence agencies. The misgivings appeared deep in an article on Page A13, under a headline that gave no inkling that we were revising our earlier view ("White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons"). The Times gave voice to skeptics of the tubes on Jan. 9, when the key piece of evidence was challenged by the International Atomic Energy Agency. That challenge was reported on Page A10; it might well have belonged on Page A1.

Click here for the rest (and be prepared to register with the Times if you haven't already--it's only a slight hassle).

This is actually pretty amazing. The only thing I can think of that would make America's "newspaper of record" reverse itself like this is that the Bush lies from the runup to the invasion are now utterly exposed for what they are. That, and the President's approval numbers are way down...nothing likes rats abandoning a sinking ship, eh?

Does this mean that reporters are now going to be allowed to do their jobs? Probably not; this looks like a bunch of damage control if you ask me.

Oh well. Better late than never, I guess. But then, there's still the matter of the responsibility the Times bears for hundreds of dead US soldiers, and thousands of dead Iraqis. As Tom Tomorrow says:

I can't really express the disgust I'm feeling this morning. I can't tell you how many times those New York Times articles were thrown in my face by supporters of the war. Don't you UNDERSTAND? Saddam is training TERRORISTS! We KNOW he has secret WMD facilities! Blah blah fucking blah. It's the Wen Ho Lee fiasco on a larger scale. It's what a lot of us wacko lefties have been saying since way before anyone ever heard the word "blog": in order to preserve their precious access to power, the Times, and papers like it, too often serve as stenographers to said power. Doing so this time has left them with serious blood on their hands, and I hope they are deeply ashamed.

Indeed.

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