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MAINSTREAM MEDIA FAIL IN PUBLIC SERVICE
10 February 2004

The New York Review of Books has published an article criticizing the mainstream American media of failing to deliver professional reporting and accurate information to the public. The Review reports that "the 'intelligence community' was rent by bitter disputes over how Bush officials were using the data on Iraq. Many journalists knew about this, yet few chose to write about it." The article specifies that there was intense dispute over the legitimacy of information provided by Ahmed Chalabi, the opposition leader.

When information arose that some high-profile defectors, whose intelligence reports were trusted, had inflated their background and the degree of access they had to WMD programs, reporters seem to have simply trusted in the vetting of Chalabi himself, without following up. NYRB goes on to say: "US journalists were far too reliant on sources sympathetic to the administration. Those with dissenting views—and there were more than a few—were shut out." This led to coverage that was "deferential" to White House positions, and a climate in which abstract interpretive claims were treated as hard fact by media outlets, with a constant relay of quotes and headlines which seemed to negate any possibility of critical analysis.

The article points to the 26 August 2002 speech by VP Cheney, which for many signaled the official launch of the campaign to invade Iraq. It was then that Dick Cheney began to assert that Iraq was known to possess nuclear technology and that its intention was to launch an attack against the US. It is now reported that there was no evidence for this assertion, but it is important to note that as early as 1998, there was general consensus among inspectors and intelligence agencies that Iraq's nuclear program had been dismantled.

In 2002, prominent reporters for the New York Times were effectively convinced by administration claims that intercepted aluminum tubes could only have been used to enrich uranium. In fact, the very reports cited specified that other uses were possible, if not likely, and experts had raised doubts about whether the tubes would even be suitable for uranium enrichment. The dissenting information was ignored by reporters, who believed they had a network of trustworthy sources, compiled by Chalabi, who wholly supported the White House position on WMD.

As the hard-line view of the aluminum tubes came to prominence in national media, administration hard-liners intensified their rhetoric, including "mushroom cloud" in their mention of possible outcomes. The evidence was no more solid, but the reporting was. The climate in which alleged evidence had been presented (the dubious aluminum tubes, the forged Niger document, biased defectors) essentially ceased to question whether the evidence actually said what was claimed.

Despite this climate, the New York Times was reporting the doubts of nuclear experts. It was reporting them

Six paragraphs into an article that summarized the White House's case against Iraq, Miller and Gordon noted that senior officials acknowledged "that there have been debates among intelligence experts about Iraq's intentions in trying to buy such tubes."

Various nuclear experts had read accounts of the case for WMD with skepticism and concern, and they approached the New York Times and other major media sources, offering their alternative analysis, or at least to suggest the urgency of including caveats with such sweeping claims.

David Albright, whose objections had led to the sixth paragraph "footnote", wrote his own report, which led to the ISIS report: 'Aluminum Tubing Is an Indicator of an Iraqi Gas Centrifuge Program: But Is the Tubing Specifically for Centrifuges?' which questioned the veracity of the White House position, so widely disseminated by the national media.

That report specified:

An intelligence official told the media that the statement in the White Paper quoted above was toned down. The CIA asked the White House to do so to reflect dissenting opinions and also to give the United States a "little wiggle room." Reflecting this uncertainty, another intelligence official added that the aluminum tubing was "not a smoking gun." (ISIS)

But the claim that Iraq was trying acquire materials which would be useful or necessary in creating a uranium-enrichment centrifuge was expressed as a sign of absolute certainty that Iraq already had nuclear capabilities. Intelligence analysts were reportedly concerned that the tubes might not be for that purpose at all, and therefore were "not smoking gun".

In the fall of 2002, the Washington Post reported, on page A18, that the administration was "trying to quiet dissent among its own analysts over how to interpret the evidence." But even that report listed dissenters as "independent analysts" and suggested that the dominant position among government experts was that Iraq was close to possessing the technology necessary to build a nuclear bomb.

NYRB cites a report on 8 October 2002 by Knight-Ridder which notes:

While President Bush marshals congressional and international support for invading Iraq, a growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats in his own government privately have deep misgivings about the administration's double-time march toward war.

The above cited reports demonstrate that a number of credible sources were available which could have led responsible journalists to doubt the water-tight quality of the information they were relaying to the public.

The NYRB article goes on to mention the claims about Al-Qaeda ties to Iraq. On this point, it appears the press was even more inclined to accept administration testimony as its sole source, disseminating frightening tales about nerve agent being turned over to terrorists for use against the US. No solid evidence was ever presented, but the story ran on the Washington Post's front page.

NYRB also notes the IAEA's stated frustration with the reporting methods which prevailed at the time. The US media were much more inclined to report the goings on at UNMOVIC, based in New York, than they were to report on the activities of the IAEA, based in Vienna, and reponsible for dismantling Iraq's nuclear program. According to NYRB, the success of IAEA in dismantling Iraq's nuclear program was reported on the organization's website, and was fully available to the press, regardless of geography, and still, administration assertions, even where they contradicted known reports, were allowed to take center-stage.

The UN Security Council had received the IAEA reports, and was aware of their intelligence and their progress. Nevertheless:

Jacques Baute, the head of the IAEA's Iraq inspection team, complained that the agency had a hard time getting its story out. And that story, he explained, was that by 1998 "it was pretty clear we had neutralized Iraq's nuclear program. There was unanimity on that."

Even as these reports indicated success in the inspections process, the Bush administration asserted that "A return of inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever of [Saddam's] compliance with UN resolutions." Again, no solid evidence for this claim was offered, and the actual reports of inspectors were essentially ignored.

When the IAEA issued its interim report on 9 January 2003, it was coolly received by US media. The report found that "no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities has been detected" though some tests were still being conducted. Despite this evidence, Sec. of State Colin Powell's report on 5 February was assertive and specific in its allegations. Powell claimed to have reliable and specific evidence suggesting ongoing nuclear-weapons-oriented activities.

The administration's public stance seemed to be that finding nothing indicated only the incompetence of the IAEA. Powell's speech was received with great fanfare in the US media, touted as an historical moment and as evidence of great statesmanship. A critique of the presentation was reported by CNN as laughable and sickening, and the New York Times ran three front-page stories in praise of the speech.

The Washington Post also reported Powell's success in making the case, but:

Tucked inside each paper, however, were articles that questioned the quality of Powell's evidence. In the Times, for instance, C.J. Chivers reported (on page A22) that Kurdish officials in northern Iraq were puzzled by Powell's claims of a poison-making facility in the area. A few days later, after visiting the purported camp, he found it to be a "wholly unimpressive place" that lacked even plumbing. (NYRB)

There were many critics who suggested that the presentation actually lacked almost all of the proof it claimed to present, that the points were made suggestively or metaphorically (a vial of powder presented as 'evidence' of what bio-chem weapons would look like, but no proof). Over time, the expert appraisal of the presentation diminished, but the 'front page' climate kept up the media's "march to war" about which the President has complained so extensively after the fact.

Reservations spread among researchers and reporters, but the national media were not interested in presenting a dissenting view. Instead, a kind of doctrine of inevitability took over. It became acceptable analysis for reporters to say that a war could not be avoided because US forces were "in the region", as if the goal was not peace, but war. In such a climate, it appears the news media in general were cowed into a market-oriented posture in which fears about alienating the public (which was said to believe the evidence presented) by suggesting any dissenting views on intelligence claims.

The major news sources failed in their reporting because they chose to bury stories replete with evidence deep below their lead stories and led with headlines asserting claims which were already known to be questionable. They changed the strategy of reporting from an investigative analysis to an climate-driven opinion support system, where prominent or popular voices were magnified while credible though less visible sources were ingored or belittled. Trend reporting leads to inevitability, not the other way around; as evidence emerges to suggest the media's mishandling of this ongoing saga, we can report an historic disservice to the legacy of America's open society and the public debate enshrined in the First Amendment. [For more: NYRB]