Pre-War News Coverage: Defective Criticism

An article appearing in the New York Review of Books last February makes a scandalous allegation about the Bush administration. Eight months later and on the eve of election, the charge, suggestive of a democracy run amok, remains far from resolved. The alleged abuses are outrageous ... yet widely believed, and by now so familiar as to be banal: that the administration used "deceptions and concealments" to bring the nation to war in Iraq.

But the article's focus is on a still bigger problem. Bigger than subversion of democracy by the Bush administration, bigger than any single administration's betrayal of the people, it is the systemic breakdown of democracy's bulwark against oppression -- the press -- and its capitulation to government falsehoods.

The article -- "Now They Tell Us," by Michael Massing, New York Review of Books, February 26, 2004 -- puts the issue thus:

In the period before the war, ... [news] coverage was highly deferential to the White House. This was especially apparent on the issue of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction-- the heart of the President's case for war. Despite abundant evidence of the administration's brazen misuse of intelligence in this matter, the press repeatedly let officials get away with it.

[Article available at NYRB site and also here.]

The scenario evoked by Massing's stupendous charges is probably true:

• the Bush administration manipulated the populace by conjuring a false threat to America's security;

• the deception succeeded, thanks to the dismal failure of the free press to fulfill its critical democratic role;

• an unprovoked war, which an informed nation would have rejected, was launched against Iraq.

If anything were to warrant concentrating America's brainpower, one would think this assault on the democratic order would be it. Unfortunately, as shown below, Massing's piece is a hodgepodge of illogic and irrelevancies, and its publication in NYRB suggests the nation's discourse is not at the level demanded by its sickly civic state. (A book version is also available, with a preface by Orville Schell, Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.)

A series of failed arguments

1. No nukes

The IAEA's [International Atomic Energy Agency's] success in dismantling Iraq's nuclear program was spelled out in the periodic reports it sent to the UN Security Council--reports that remained posted on its Web site. And, it was broadly agreed, any effort to restart that program after 1998 would have very likely been detected by the outside world. As the Carnegie Endowment noted in a recent report ("WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications"),

Iraq's nuclear program had been dismantled by inspectors after the 1991 war, and these facilities-- unlike chemical or biological ones --tend to be large, expensive, dependent on extensive imports, and very difficult to hide "in plain sight" under the cover of commercial (that is, dual-use) facilities.

These facts, it added, were "largely knowable" in the fall of 2002, when the debate over inspections was taking place.

Bush officials, however, were loudly proclaiming otherwise. "A return of inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever of [Saddam's] compliance with UN resolutions," Vice President Cheney declared in his August 26[, 2002] speech. "On the contrary, there is a great danger it would provide false comfort that Saddam was somehow 'back in his box.'"

Massing's assertion that "Bush officials ... were loudly proclaiming otherwise" is weirdly unmoored from his presentation of the respective parties' positions. On one side, the indication is that no nuclear program is operating in Iraq; on the other, Cheney talks about "compliance with UN resolutions." How do these positions conflict? Clearly Saddam can violate UN resolutions in ways other than physically "restarting" his nuclear weapons programs.

Massing's logic cannot be rescued by referring to a Cheney statement (from the same Aug. 26 speech) which he quotes in a separate section of his essay, in which Cheney states that Saddam had "resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons." That could merely reflect a view that Saddam was shopping for nuclear-related equipment on world markets -- not the kind of activity which the Carnegie Endowment report indicates would be "very difficult to hide."

2. Maybe nukes

In late November 2002, UN inspectors finally returned to Iraq.... Iraq's failure to account for large stocks of banned weapons uncovered prior to 1998 fed suspicions that it still had such weapons. Nonetheless, IAEA inspectors felt confident that they could get a reliable reading of the status of Iraq's alleged nuclear program. They had more than a hundred sites they wanted to visit, based on interviews with defectors, data collected from previous inspections, satellite photos, and information provided by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies. Over the summer, IAEA specialists had detected in satellite photos new construction at sites where nuclear activity had taken place in the past.

This indicates that at the time of Cheney's August 2002 speech, and until November 2002, the IAEA did not have firm knowledge that Saddam did not have a nuclear program physically operating. So it clashes with Massing's earlier implicit claim.

In short, Massing adapts facts to his immediate argument's needs. Here he wants to argue that the press was remiss, when the IAEA reported it had found no nuclear activity, in paying little heed to "news of the utmost significance." So he presents an Iraq whose nuke status was unknown. Earlier, to argue that Cheney made a statement at odds with known facts, he produced an Iraq known to be nuke-free.

3. Innocuous tubes

But Massing's argument on this point is similar to his attempt to demonstrate a false Cheney statement. He exhibits a bizarre failure to understand the plain English meaning of the very quotations he himself presents to support his position.

Massing quotes the finding by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the IAEA, that the tubes

appear to be consistent with reverse engineering of rockets [for non-nuclear purposes]. While it would be possible to modify such tubes for the manufacture of centrifuges [in order to produce nuclear weapons], they are not directly suitable for it.

This is not a strong repudiation of the view that the tubes were intended for nuclear weapons purposes. That the tubes are "consistent" with non-nuclear purposes does not mean they are inconsistent with nuclear purposes. ElBaradei's statement explicitly says it would be "possible" to use the tubes for nuclear weapons purposes.

Yet Massing declares that "no sign whatever of any effort by Iraq to resume its nuclear program" had been found, and criticizes the Times, which did report ElBaradei's statement, for not featuring the statement more prominently:

The Times, which had so prominently displayed its initial story about the aluminum tubes, buried its main article about ElBaradei's statement on page A10.

4. Times reporters duped

Gordon and Miller are responding to a charge that Massing does not openly state in his article. But what he means is that he suspects the administration gulled them with a pseudo-leak that was actually a deliberate disclosure. After quoting Gordon's protest that it was indeed a "leak," Massing comments: "Perhaps so, but administration officials were clearly delighted with the story." In Massing's mind, apparently, this bolsters the case against the Times.

5. Miller says her role govt mouthpiece

Iraq had tried to import thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes. The tubes had been intercepted, and specialists sent to examine them had concluded from their diameter, thickness, and other technical properties that they had only one possible use--as casings for rotors in centrifuges to enrich uranium, a key step in producing an atomic bomb.

Understandably, the Times reported this information, properly attributing it to administration sources.

But David Albright, a physicist and former weapons inspector, questioned whether the tubes were intended for making nuclear weapons. On seeing the story, he contacted Miller and voiced his doubts.

A follow-up story was published which Albright felt did not adequately represent the level of dissent concerning the tubes' purpose. Massing questioned Miller about the follow-up story, and his article reports:

Miller said that as an investigative reporter in the intelligence area, "my job isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of The New York Times what the government thought about Iraq's arsenal." Many journalists would disagree with this; instead, they would consider offering an independent evaluation of official claims one of their chief responsibilities.

Miller responds in a letter appearing in the March 25, 2004 NYRB issue:

Michael Massing misquoted me in his highly selective account of how he believes the press covered Iraq before the war. Though I asked him to read me back my quotes for accuracy and he reluctantly did, there is one that he missed. I did not say that as an investigative reporter, I was not an "independent intelligence analyst." I am both an analyst and very independent. What I said was that as an investigative reporter, I could not be an independent intelligence agency.

Massing replies, in the same NYRB issue:

Judith Miller is simply wrong. During my hours of interviews with her, she requested that I read back all of the quotes that I wanted to use, and I readily agreed. I distinctly remember reading back the quote in question, and I distinctly remember her approving it. I did this not "reluctantly" but willingly and patiently, precisely so that I could guarantee accuracy and avoid the type of claim she is now making.

Who to believe, given these contradictory accounts? The statement Massing imputes to Miller has her viewing her function as that of government mouthpiece: "My job is to tell readers of The New York Times what the government thought about Iraq's arsenal." This is so patently wrong, and Massing's retort that journalists should be independent so obvious, that Massing's position is simply not credible -- especially in light of his article's many other lapses.

6. Miller's temper

Last May, Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post wrote of an e-mail exchange between Miller and John Burns, then the Times bureau chief in Baghdad, in which Burns rebuked Miller for writing an article about [Iraqi opposition leader Ahmed] Chalabi without informing him. Miller replied that she had been covering Chalabi for about ten years and had "done most of the stories about him for our paper." Chalabi, she added, "has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to our paper."

When asked about this, Miller said that the significance of her ties to Chalabi had been exaggerated. While she had met some defectors through him, she said, only one had resulted in a front-page story on WMD prior to the war. Her assertion that Chalabi had provided most of the Times's front-page exclusives on WMD was, she said, part of "an angry e-mail exchange with a colleague." In the heat of such exchanges, Miller said, "You say things that aren't true. If you look at the record, you'll see they aren't true."

This seems a peculiar admission. Yet on the broader issue of her ties to Chalabi, the record bears Miller out. Before the war, Miller wrote or co-wrote several front-page articles about Iraq's WMD based on information from defectors; only one of them came via Chalabi.

Given that "the record bears Miller out," what is the point of relating Miller's email exchange with Burns? There is no point. The anecdote is irrelevant to the Times's coverage.

7. Miller's reliance on ridiculous source

"Judy should have known about this," Albright says. "This is her area."

"Hamza had no credibility at all," one IAEA staff member told me. "Journalists who called us and asked for an assessment of these people-- we'd certainly tell them." Miller said she believed Hamza was a credible source because he was very useful to the administration. After the war, she noted, the administration sent him to Iraq to work on atomic energy matters. Yet the administration's reliance on defectors like Hamza was itself highly controversial and deserving of scrutiny. Few journalists provided it, though. In the months leading up to the war, Hamza was a popular source for journalists and a frequent guest on TV news shows.

It may well be true that Miller was wrong to rely on Hamza. But Massing, yet again, has failed to make the case. He has presented a single named source who states, with no elaboration, that Hamza "made many ridiculous claims." The reader has no reason to suppose that Miller's reliance on the administration is any more objectionable than Massing's reliance on Albright in questioning Miller's journalism.

8. IAEA ignored

[T]he IAEA, which was based in Vienna and headed by Mohamed ElBaradei, got little [coverage].

"We were constantly frustrated," Melissa Fleming, an IAEA spokesperson, told me. "The whole focus was on UNMOVIC, which was in New York." According to IAEA staff members, the press gave far too much weight to what US experts or administration officials said. 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."

But there is a glaring omission in this criticism of the press for under-reporting "that story." Massing has neglected to argue that "that story" was news, or that actual press coverage conflicted with it.

9. All but a few deferred

In the weeks following [Colin Powell's speech of February 5, 2003 at the United Nations], one journalist--Walter Pincus of The Washington Post--developed strong reservations about it. A longtime investigative reporter, Pincus went back and read the UN inspectors' reports of 1998 and 1999, and he was struck to learn from them how much weaponry had been destroyed in Iraq before 1998. He also tracked down General Anthony Zinni, the former head of the US Central Command, who described the hundreds of weapons sites the United States had destroyed in its 1998 bombing. All of this, Pincus recalled, "made me go back and read Powell's speech closely. And you could see that it was all inferential. If you analyzed all the intercepted conversations he discussed, you could see that they really didn't prove anything."

By mid-March, Pincus felt he had enough material for an article questioning the administration's claims on Iraq. His editors weren't interested. It was only after the intervention of his colleague Bob Woodward, who was researching a book on the war and who had developed similar doubts, that the editors agreed to run the piece--on page A17. Despite the administration's claims about Iraq's WMD, it began, "US intelligence agencies have been unable to give Congress or the Pentagon specific information about the amounts of banned weapons or where they are hidden...." Noting the pressure intelligence analysts were feeling from the White House and Pentagon, Pincus wrote that senior officials, in making the case for war, "repeatedly have failed to mention the considerable amount of documented weapons destruction that took place in Iraq between 1991 and 1998."

Two days later, Pincus, together with Dana Milbank, the Post's White House correspondent, was back with an even more critical story. "As the Bush administration prepares to attack Iraq this week," it began, "it is doing so on the basis of a number of allegations against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that have been challenged--and in some cases disproved --by the United Nations, European governments and even US intelligence reports." That story appeared on page A13.

Massing's implicit point is that there was much to criticize in the administration's position. But relaying Pincus's expressions of skepticism does not support his point; it only gives readers Pincus's opinion that the administration's position was vulnerable to criticism, with practically no substantiation.

Perhaps Massing is relying on an appeal to Pincus's authority. But appeal to authority is unpersuasive when other, equally credible authorities have the opposite point of view. A single clear example of the administration relying on a "disproven" allegation would greatly strengthen Massing's argument. (Also helpful would be an explanation of how a "considerable amount" of destroyed weaponry is relevant in gauging remaining quantities.)

The passage on Pincus does make one concrete point about WMD -- that the administration had not provided "specific information" on WMD amounts and locations. But this alone does not warrant strong skepticism about administration claims. (Could there not be evidence of WMD absent such information?) Massing leaves much of his argument unspoken, but the case he wishes to make for press negligence is not self-evident.

He never told us (the point)

Of course, altering a prevailing orthodoxy is no small proposition. But as long as Massing has space to bemoan "one of the most entrenched and disturbing features of American journalism: its pack mentality," what harm can there be in calling attention to yet stranger conventions?

In fact, what is the point of a general denunciation of the press, like Massing's, if it doesn't propose institutional reform of any kind? If journalistic failures had been the exception, then criticism might help spotlight offenders and perhaps bring about some beneficial head-rolling. But when failure is as generalized as Massing alleges, it suggests a need to address structural deficiencies.

Since we are talking about the broad failure of the institution of journalism, and since journalism is a profession, would it be unthinkable to propose some principles of sound practice that would have countered the pre-war breakdown of news coverage?

Time and again in Massing's piece, one is struck by journalists scratching their heads and wondering what basis the administration could have for its bold assertions about the Iraqi threat. Cheney declares there "is no doubt" that Saddam Hussein "has weapons of mass destruction," is preparing to use them against the United States, and has "resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons." Powell, for his part, refers to a poison-making facility in northern Iraq which a Times journalist, on inspection, finds to be a "wholly unimpressive place" lacking even plumbing.

The idea that the administration might be directly confronted and made to account for its claims does not arise.

Journalists striving to ferret out the basis for the administration's "knowledge" may come upon inconclusive evidence -- evidence which would fail to constitute an adequate basis for the administration's assertions. And the journalists may criticize the evidence. But they cannot confidently reject the administration's claims, since the administration might possess other evidence of which they are unaware.

The administration is brimming with confidence. The journalists are tentative, unsure. The administration, naturally, wins the day.

There is an obvious problem here, one that shouts out for the equally obvious prescription:

When government makes unproven assertions of great import, and is unwilling to respond convincingly to questions, then the assertions should be regarded -- and presented to readers -- as dubious.

This is hardly radical. It merely reflects the widespread notion that democratic government is supposed to be accountable to the people. As an operating principle for journalism, it is practical and universally applicable. Journalists should not function as passive conduits for whatever the government asserts.

Massing's piece also discusses perverse institutional incentives that distort the journalistic enterprise:

[W]hy ... didn't the Post and other papers devote more time to pursuing the claims about the administration's manipulation of intelligence? Part of the explanation, no doubt, rests with the Bush administration's skill at controlling the flow of news. "Their management of information is far greater than that of any administration I've seen," Knight Ridder's John Walcott observed. "They've made it extremely difficult to do this kind of [investigative] work." That management could take both positive forms--rewarding sympathetic reporters with leaks, background interviews, and seats on official flights--and negative ones-- freezing out reporters who didn't play along. In a city where access is all, few wanted to risk losing it.

Such sanctions were reinforced by the national political climate. With a popular president promoting war, Democrats in Congress were reluctant to criticize him. This deprived reporters of opposition voices to quote, and of hearings to cover. Many readers, meanwhile, were intolerant of articles critical of the President. Whenever The Washington Post ran such pieces, reporter Dana Priest recalls, "We got tons of hate mail and threats, calling our patriotism into question." Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and The Weekly Standard, among others, all stood ready to pounce on journalists who strayed, branding them liberals or traitors--labels that could permanently damage a career. Gradually, journalists began to muzzle themselves.

Essentially, Massing is claiming that institutionalized conflicts of interest are leading to biased reporting. But by neglecting to hint at any reform, Massing's piece is tantamount to suggesting that we resign ourselves to an alliance between the fourth estate and the executive branch.

Again, reforms are not unthinkable. If journalism is being manipulated by administration carrots and sticks, then journalism as a profession should be capable of formulating measures to avoid cooperating in its own corruption -- measures which responsible press organs could then publicly adopt.

Similarly, if honest journalists are really having their careers harmed by being "branded" as "liberals or traitors," one can imagine responses other than resignation to the inevitability of an intimidated press.

But the deepest, most important institutional conflict of interest is not alluded to at all in Massing's piece -- though it may be what Pincus had in mind in a conversation Massing recounts:

The placement [of critical stories on back pages] was no accident, Pincus says. "The front pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times are very important in shaping what other people think," he told me. "They're like writing a memo to the White House." But the Post's editors, he said, "went through a whole phase in which they didn't put things on the front page that would make a difference."

News reporting is supposed to be disinterested. But news media owners are not disinterested. Here is the most fundamental absurdity of American journalism -- its basic premise is at war with the central tenet of capitalism. Everyone is supposed to pursue their self-interest ... except the news business, which is supposed to pursue Truth.

This is not an insurmountable paradox. But we have a problem, and it should be addressed. (The conflicts can be lessened by, for example, addressing the much-discussed "media monopoly.")

Without institutional reform, distorted news coverage can be expected to continue. And if distorted news has brought us an unwanted war, we may anticipate further shocks to the democratic conscience.

Related:

• Indications of Future Journalism

• The Plot to Sell the News, by Michael Wolff