Mea Culpa for Prewar Coverage.

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Registered: 03-18-2000
Mea Culpa for Prewar Coverage.
2
Fri, 08-13-2004 - 3:45pm

Glad they're owning-up to this, but it still make me angry. Some of these 'confessions' are p.poor excuses, IMO.


Paper issues mea culpa for prewar coverage.


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040813/MEDIA13/TPInternational/TopStories


The Washington Post yesterday joined the conga line of respected U.S. news organizations apologizing for flawed reporting in the runup to war in Iraq last year, publishing a front-page story by media reporter Howard Kurtz that called the paper's coverage "strikingly one-sided at times."


The article immediately became the focus of discussion among U.S. journalists, since the Post's coverage of the Bush administration's case for war had not been widely perceived as especially weak.


In his 3,000-word article, Mr. Kurtz said Post editors tended to relegate pieces that criticized the Bush administration's war plans and the rationale for invading Iraq to the back pages of the paper.


He quoted executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. as saying the Post was "so focused on trying to figure out what the administration was doing that we were not giving the same play to people who said it wouldn't be a good idea to go to war and were questioning the administration's rationale. Not enough of those stories were put on the front page. That was a mistake on my part."


Assistant managing editor Bob Woodward told Mr. Kurtz that no journalist wanted to challenge the belief that weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq, in case weapons were later found. "I think it was part of the group-think."


The Post's unusual mea culpa follows publication in May of an extensive editor's note in The New York Times that said the paper had been too quick to believe claims about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction.


Executive editor Bill Keller's note ran on an inside page. "Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper," he wrote.


Yesterday, Mr. Kurtz said the genesis of his piece was different. He told the on-line edition of the trade magazine Editor & Publisher that he had assigned it to himself, and said it met with no meddling from the paper's editors.


The articles follow months of criticism from those who say the U.S. news media were too willing to publish faulty information supplied by administration allies.


In an on-line chat session yesterday, Mr. Kurtz noted that stories about Iraq's purported possession of banned weapons were particularly hard to report. "You couldn't go to Iraq . . . you had to rely on sources, many of whom couldn't go on the record and all of whom were relying on shadowy intelligence," he wrote. "That doesn't excuse the shortcomings of the media in general and The Post in particular, but this was not easy stuff."


Mr. Kurtz said it was beyond the paper's abilities to determine whether the administration's claims were true. "We couldn't have definitively settled the question," he wrote. "We could have done a better job of questioning the administration's evidence and given greater prominence to those with minority views."


Representatives of the three major U.S. television networks yesterday said their news divisions were not engaged in formal reassessments of coverage.


Washington Post apologises for underplaying WMD scepticism.


The Washington Post said yesterday it had underplayed scepticism of the White House's claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, becoming the latest US newspaper to publish a mea culpa of its prewar coverage.


In a 3,000-word front-page article the newspaper said it "did not pay enough attention to voices raising questions about the war".

The admission followed similar articles by the New York Times and New Republic magazine, which said they were either insufficiently rigorous, gullible or more concerned with getting stories first than getting them right.

Leonard Downie, the Post's executive editor, said: "We were so focused on trying to figure out what the administration was doing that we were not giving the same play to people who said it wouldn't be a good idea to go to war ... Not enough of those stories were put on the front page. That was a mistake on my part. the voices raising questions about the war were the lonely ones. We didn't pay enough attention to the minority."


More see link........


http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1282106,00.html

cl-Libraone~

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2003
Fri, 08-13-2004 - 6:23pm

Not too terribly surprised either.


iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Mon, 08-16-2004 - 9:40am

Media and God help Bush sell war on Iraq!


http://www.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=45633&cat=World


A new book titled "God Willing?: Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the 'War on Terror,' and the Echoing Press," says that media and religion helped US President George W. Bush ward off criticism over his 'War against Terrorism' in Iraq.



The book by David Domke, an associate professor of communication and adjunct professor of political science at the University of Washington, reveals that President Bush, who co-related his 'War Against Terrorism' following the WTC twin tower attacks as a fight between the good and the evil, used a differential media and religion as a tool to divert flak from his war-mongering policies.


It is understood that his four speeches among the 15 national addresses between the September 11 attacks and his Iraq campaign notably the one named "Mission Accomplished" delivered on board the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Lincoln, portrayed all of America's or more precisely his actions as divine, which was surprisingly challenged by only two of the 326 odd post-speech editorials in 20 leading newspapers.


"In a time of crisis, the certainty conveyed by what I call 'political fundamentalism' put forward by the administration silenced the Democrats and had great appeal to the press. And yet with so many around the globe expressing a different view, the press failed its readers by uncritically echoing these fundamentalist messages," Domke was quoted as saying.


The findings by Domke comes out of detailed research taking into account his other 18 public statements about the USA Patriot Act, 121 comments about homeland security, 81 statements about Iraq and 100 other statements by administration officials, including Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.


"These messages were rooted in a religiously conservative worldview, yet they were often framed by both the administration and the news media to emphasize a sense of nationalism. That made the fundamentalist approach attractive, or at least palatable, to the press and public," he added. (ANI)

cl-Libraone~

 


Photobucket&nbs