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Mediamatters.Org - Media failures didn't stop when the war started
When excerpts from former White House press secretary Scott
McClellan's new book were made public this week, you might have expected
McClellan's claim that President Bush cannot remember whether he has ever
used cocaine to cause a stir. After
all, Bush's alleged use of the drug was one of the few negative stories
about him the media had any appetite for during the 2000 campaign.
Besides, McClellan's other revelations were years removed from being timely. Does anybody who isn't employed by or
related to George Bush still deny that the administration wasn't truthful
about Iraq? Or that the news media could
have done a better job in the months preceding the war?
That second point --
the media's flawed coverage of the march to war -- has been illustrated and explained again
and again. Dan Froomkin provided a roundup
of some of the more notable examples for Nieman Watchdog this week: The New York Times' May 2004 mea culpa,
Howard Kurtz's
critique of The Washington Post's coverage later
that year, Bill Moyers' Buying The War,
and more.
Earlier this month, MSNBC's Chris Matthews said
of his network: "It was basically pro-war during the war ... the bosses
were." CNN's
Jessica Yellin, who worked at MSNBC during the months leading up to the start
of the Iraq war, said
this week that the media "dropped the ball" in part due to
"enormous pressure from corporate executives ... to make sure that this
was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic
fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings." Yellin said, "They would push me in
different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical and
try to put on pieces that were more positive." And CBS anchor Katie Couric, who worked at
NBC until 2006, agreed
that the media
"were remiss in not asking some of the right questions."
But --
incredibly -- some
journalists responded to McClellan's statement that the fourth estate
didn't perform as well as it should have prior to the Iraq war by denying
that there were any flaws in
prewar media coverage.
NBC's David Gregory, for example, said McClellan
"also writes in the book that he think that the so-called liberal media
got it wrong and was not hard enough on the administration about the war. You
know, I don't know where he gets that idea. I don't know where other people get
that idea." Later,
Gregory said: "I
think he's wrong. He makes the same kind of argument a lot of people on the
left have made. I tried not to be defensive about it. I thought a lot about this over a number of years, and I
disagree with that assessment. I think the questions were asked. I think we
pushed. I think we prodded. I think we challenged the president. I think not
only those of us in the White House press corps did that, but others in the
rest of the landscape of the media did that."
Froomkin,
Glenn Greenwald, and others
have convincingly rebutted Gregory's (and Charlie Gibson's)
assertions that the media performed admirably prior to the Iraq war. In any case, most people -- including many journalists -- understand the absurdity
of the defense. It is
worth emphasizing that Gregory et al are not denying that the media's
failings are primarily
responsible for the rush to war; they are denying that the media did anything wrong at all. If Gregory were merely saying, "We could
have done things better, but the bigger problem was a deeply dishonest
administration," few would argue. But that isn't what he says; David Gregory says the news media don't deserve any criticism.
Instead, Gregory blames ...
well, everyone else: "If there wasn't a debate in this country, then maybe
the American people should think about, why not? Where was Congress? Where was
the House? Where was the Senate? Where was public
opinion about the war? What did the former president believe about the prewar
intelligence? He agreed that -- in fact, Bill Clinton agreed that Saddam had
WMD."
But, as I noted when
Gregory's NBC colleague Tim Russert suggested last year that the media
relied excessively on the Bush administration for prewar news reports because
there wasn't an "opposition party," the truth is that the
majority of congressional
Democrats voted against the Iraq
war authorization. (And,
as Eric Boehlert noted this
week, war opponents included high-profile Democrats like Sen. Edward Kennedy. The news media basically
ignored him.)
That isn't to say that various war critics
couldn't have done more to stop the war, but the effort by Russert and
Gregory to duck responsibility for their own failures by pointing to a lack of
congressional opposition to the war is ludicrous. Either they know that most congressional
Democrats opposed the war, in which case their argument is dishonest, or they don't know -- in which case their ignorance confirms the
criticism that their coverage of the war is severely lacking.
But even more incredible is that David Gregory is willing to
say, with a straight face, that criticizing the media's coverage of the Iraq
war is something "a lot of people on the left" have done. Well, yes, technically
that's true. But
it is also something a lot of people in the center, on the right, and in the
media -- including
David Gregory's colleagues --
have done. And now it
is something a Bush White House press secretary has done. Marginalizing such criticism as merely the
complaints of "the left" is grossly inaccurate. It is, instead, something approaching a
consensus view.
And a well-founded consensus view, at that. Anti-war voices were marginalized by the media. That isn't something
"a lot of people on the left" claim; that is a fact. News reports that did
challenge the administration were buried on Page A17. That isn't something "a lot
of people on the left" claim;
that
is a fact. The
false claims in Colin Powell's deeply flawed presentation to the United
Nations were reported as though they were true. That isn't something "a lot of
people on the left" claim;
that is a fact. Anyone who has
"thought a lot about this over a number of years," as Gregory
claims to have done, surely must be aware of countless other examples.
Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay of McClatchy
(formerly Knight Ridder) -- seen by many as the news outlet that offered the
best coverage in the run-up to the Iraq war -- wrote a scathing
rebuttal to ABC's Charlie Gibson, NBC's Brian Williams, and other
journalists who have denied flaws in prewar reporting: "The news media
have been, if anything, even more craven than the administration has been in
defending its failure to investigate Bush's case for war in Iraq before the
war."
But Gregory wasn't alone in dismissing the widespread,
and factually sound, criticism of the media's prewar performance as the
ravings of a few liberals. Politico's Mike Allen went on a right-wing
radio program to accuse
McClellan of adopting "the vocabulary, rhetoric of the left-wing haters. Can you believe
it in here he says the White House press corps was too deferential to the
administration ...
in the run-up to the war?"
"Left-wing haters." That's how Mike Allen described critics
of the media's coverage of the run-up to the war.
Allen's rant serves as a useful reminder that the
media's deferential treatment of the Bush administration didn't end
when the Iraq
war began. Just a few
weeks ago, Allen conducted the most obsequious interviews of an American president in memory. The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin explained:
Has there ever
been a more moronic interview of a president of the United States than the one
conducted yesterday by Mike Allen?
[...]
Allen's interview started off with seven questions
about Jenna Bush's wedding, and went downhill from there.
The only really critical question came from a reader,
who asked: "Do you feel that you were misled on Iraq?" Bush predictably ducked
it.
Here are some of Allen's own questions:
"Mr. President, I know you're going to hate
this, but I'm hoping that we may twist your arm and talk about baseball for
just a moment. (Laughter.) Mr. President, you're a Major League Baseball team
owner again. Everyone is a free agent. You have a Yankees-like wallet. Who is
your first position player? Who's your pitcher?"
"Now, Mr. President, you and the First Lady
appeared on American Idol's charity show, 'Idol Gives Back.' And I wonder who
do you think is going to win? Syesha, David Cook, or David Archuleta?"
"All right. Mr. President, who does the better
impression, Will Ferrell of you, or Dana Carvey of your father?"
"And speaking of impressions, our friend, Robert
Draper, author of 'Dead Certain,' said you do a great impression of Dr. Evil
from 'Austin Powers'."
Allen barely managed to stop short of offering to peel Bush
a grape. And yet he
wonders why people suggest that the press has been "too deferential to
the administration."
What matters most now are not the few journalists who still
deny that they could have done a better job before the war started -- it is the many news
organizations that have continued since the war began.
Journalists
lavished praise on Bush when he declared
"Mission Accomplished" rather than offering a sober assessment of
whether it really had been. The
U.S. media did their best to ignore the Downing Street memo
-- and the
establishment might never have covered it had it not been for the efforts of Media Matters, Rep. John Conyers, and
progressive bloggers and writers. News
reports endlessly
repeated and reflected pro-war spin during the 2006 congressional debate
over the war. In 2007,
they went to
work on behalf of Gen.
David Petraeus.
And this year? This
year, the media have
all but ignored Iraq. The New York Times' David Carr explained
this week:
Even as we celebrate generations of
American soldiers past, the women and men who are making that sacrifice today
in Iraq and Afghanistan receive less attention every day. There's plenty
of blame to go around: battle fatigue at home, failing media resolve and a
government intent on controlling information from the battlefield.
According to the Project for Excellence in
Journalism's News Coverage Index, coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has slipped to 3
percent of all American print and broadcast news as of last week, falling from
25 percent as recently as last September.
[...]
[T]he tactical success of the surge should not be
misconstrued as making Iraq
a safer place for American soldiers. Last year was the bloodiest in the
five-year history of the conflict, with more than 900 dead, and last month, 52
perished, making it the bloodiest month of the year so far. So far in May, 18
have died.
Television network news coverage in particular has
gone off a cliff. Citing numbers provided by a consultant, Andrew Tyndall, the
Associated Press reported that in the months after September when Gen. David H. Petraeus testified
before Congress about the surge, collective coverage dropped to four minutes a
week from 30 minutes a week at the height of coverage, in September 2007.
American Journalism Review senior contributing writer Sherry Ricchiardi further illustrated the lack
of coverage of the Iraq
war:
A daily tracking
of 65 newspapers by the Associated Press confirms a dip in page-one play
throughout the country. In September 2007, the AP found 457 Iraq-related
stories (154 by the AP) on front pages, many related to a progress report
delivered to Congress by Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. Over the succeeding months,
that number fell to as low as 49. A spike in March 2008 was largely due to a
rash of stories keyed to the conflict's fifth anniversary, according to AP
Senior Managing Editor Mike Silverman.
[...]
By March 2008, a striking reversal
had taken place. Only 28 percent of Americans knew that 4,000 military
personnel had been killed in the conflict, according to a survey by the Pew Research
Center for the People
& the Press. Eight months earlier, 54 percent could cite the correct
casualty rate.
When important stories have
been reported, they have quickly been swept under the rug by the rest of the
media. That's what happened
when The New York Times revealed
previously secret ties between the Pentagon and military analysts who appeared
regularly as impartial experts on television news programs despite having
financial ties to defense contractors that stand to profit from the war. Reports that the Pentagon
cannot account for $15 billion in Iraq spending were likewise met
with a yawn.
It's bad enough that some journalists still
won't acknowledge their profession's role in the nation's
rush into war on false pretenses. But
we're still stuck in that war, with no end in sight, and the
media's performance has barely improved.Media Matters - "Media Matters"; By Jamison Foser {...} Published: May 31, 2008, 2:01 am - Indexed: May 31, 2008, 11:08 am - Page Size: 27KB |