Journalistic violations contribute to national disaster

From: Uriel Wittenberg
To: New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent
Sent: Monday, May 31, 2004 11:41 AM
Subject: Journalistic Abu Ghraib

Dear Mr. Okrent,

It has seemed for some time now that the U.S. war of "self-defense" against Iraq was an outright mistake, based on an erroneous belief that Iraq possessed W.M.D.

More recently it has been emerging that this mistake may have been encouraged, perhaps even perpetrated, by liars with an agenda -- Iraqi exiles intentionally manipulating the U.S. into ousting the Saddam regime.

Now a wholly inadequate editors' note to readers and a vague public editor column suggest that these deceptions were abetted by a journalistic Abu Ghraib at the Times itself.

The editors' note says coverage sometimes "was not as rigorous as it should have been" or was "insufficiently qualified," and wishes the Times had been "more aggressive" in re-examining dubious claims.

"Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation [from biased sources]," the note continues, adding that "many news organizations -- in particular, this one," did so too. (The Times and Iraq, May 26, 2004.)

But these confessions of innocent error are followed by examples that suggest deliberate efforts to present slanted information to readers:

On Sept. 8, 2002, the lead article of the paper was headlined "U.S. Says Hussein Intensified Quest for A-Bomb Parts." That report concerned the aluminum tubes that the administration advertised insistently as components for the manufacture of nuclear weapons fuel. The claim came not from defectors but from the best American intelligence sources available at the time....

Five days later, The Times reporters learned that the tubes were in fact a subject of debate among intelligence agencies. The misgivings appeared deep in an article on Page A13, under a headline that gave no inkling that we were revising our earlier view ("White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons").

This is inexplicable. When the The Times learned that the tubes' actual purpose was controversial, it should have been clear at once that the administration was deliberately false in "advertising insistently" that the tubes' purpose was weapons (a revelation that was newsworthy in its own right). Given that the Times understood it had publicized a deceptive claim on its front page only five days earlier, how could it fail to follow up with an explicit rectification?

This is no mere matter of failing to be sufficiently "aggressive" in re-examining past claims. This suggests an open willingness to function as dupes for the dissemination of disinformation on one of the gravest issues facing the nation -- and one that was central to the decision to go to war.

Your own review of the Times's failures regarding Iraqi W.M.D. also suggests a deliberate effort to distort news coverage:

[S]everal fine articles by David Johnston, James Risen and others that provided perspective or challenged information in the faulty stories were played as quietly as a lullaby. Especially notable among these was Risen's "C.I.A. Aides Feel Pressure in Preparing Iraqi Reports," which was completed several days before the invasion and unaccountably held for a week. It didn't appear until three days after the war's start, and even then was interred on Page B10.

[Weapons of Mass Destruction? Or Mass Distraction?, May 30, 2004]

What seems "unaccountable" to this reader is that the public editor, with an office at the Times, would apparently neglect to solicit a justification from the editors concerned to explain why the report was "unaccountably" held for a week. The handling of this story on institutional biases at the C.I.A. seems to indicate institutional biases at the Times.

You offer very vague allegations of stunning journalistic improprieties. It seems certain "severely compromised" and unnamed Times reporters based stories on lying sources, then somehow (how?) protected those sources from critical reporting by colleagues:

[A] source who turns out to have lied ... can fairly be exposed. The victims of the lie are the paper's readers, and the contract with them supersedes all others. (See Chalabi, Ahmad, et al.) Beyond that, when the cultivation of a source leads to what amounts to a free pass for the source, truth takes the fall. A reporter who protects a source not just from exposure but from unfriendly reporting by colleagues is severely compromised.

You further suggest that Times management also participated in suppressing scrutiny of false stories: "a dysfunctional system enabled some reporters operating out of Washington and Baghdad to work outside the lines of customary bureau management"; stories were "consciously shielded" from challenges by reporters "with substantial knowledge of the subject at hand."

What possible legitimate reason could there be for such practices? Are there no management channels for Times staffers to report blatant journalistic abuses? Did reporters uniformly submit, or did some attempt to come forward? How high did knowledge of the abuses go?

You write that the editors' note provides an "inadequate explanation of the journalistic imperatives and practices" that led to the Times's failures. But what these unexplored revelations suggest is a conscious decision to depart from the mission of journalism altogether.

The immense consequences unleashed by the false ideas the Times has helped promote serve to underscore the importance of a responsible press. You are right to call for an aggressive investigation.

Sincerely,

Mr. Uriel Wittenberg

Related: Pre-War News Coverage: Defective Criticism

See also: Okrent followup re NYT failures on WMD