Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[seabass]

>>>You are assumptions of media "selling" the war to the American public are wrong.<<<


So the editors of america's largest newspapers apologized for their part in selling the war because..........they had no part in selling the war?


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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/international/middleeast/26FTE_NOTE.html?ex=1178683200&en=a7a1...




WASHINGTON - The Washington Post became the latest prestigious US newspaper to question its own coverage of Iraq leading up to the US-led war, saying it underplayed stories questioning White House claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Administration assertions were on the front page. Things that challenged the administration were on A18 on Sunday or A24 on Monday," said Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks.

"There was an attitude among editors: Look, we're going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?" he added.

In retrospect, said Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr., "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 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."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0812-01.htm