WP/Kurtz: Stories Pushed Aside in the March to War

[kskiska]

Post Editors Say They Underplayed Skeptical Reports on WMDs

Thursday, August 12, 2004; Page A01

Days before the Iraq war began, veteran Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus put together a story questioning whether the Bush administration had proof that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction.

But he ran into resistance from the paper's editors, and his piece ran only after assistant managing editor Bob Woodward, who was researching a book about the drive toward war, "helped sell the story," Pincus recalled. "Without him, it would have had a tough time getting into the paper." Even so, the article was relegated to Page A17.

"We did our job but we didn't do enough, and I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder," Woodward said in an interview. "We should have warned readers we had information that the basis for this was shakier" than widely believed. "Those are exactly the kind of statements that should be published on the front page."

As violence continues in postwar Iraq and U.S. forces have yet to discover any WMDs, some critics say the media, including The Washington Post, failed the country by not reporting more skeptically on President Bush's contentions during the run-up to war.

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58127-2004Aug11.html

[SoCalDem]

1. Hmm.. I bet the parents of dead soldiers will be glad he spoke up

NOT...

Amazing how they get "Two for the price of one" on this whole mess.. They pushed stuff aside so they could beat the war drums...and now that they got their war.. they can blithely step back, and ponder the "other side of the story" AFTER it's too late to change history..

When it comes to life and death stuff, you only GET once chance Howie:(

and the people who could have made a difference kept quiet when it mattered.:(

[checks-n-balances]

2. Yes, and what did Kurtz do while all this was going on?

I thought he was supposed to be a media watchdog of sorts. I think he himself fell down on the job big time.

[Bozita]

15. Yep. And Kurtz gets paychecks from WaPo and CNN to critique himself?

Welcome to the new media.

[DBoon]

3. Do prostitutes ever have regrets the morning after?

or do they just act like it?

[KoKo]

4. Kurtz! he turned to the dark side...and Pincus being pushed off confirms

the Media Whore's existance. Without "Media Whores Online" website in those days I don't know what we all would have done, and they got onto Kurtz early. Howie wasn't always the way he is today...or maybe he was and I was so naive that I didn't see it..(which is probably the truth of it)

Sounds like "pressure and declining newspaper sales has them in a tizzy althought their "online hits" must be WAY UP! What more do they want from the FCC? They already have joint communications with Newsweek Mag/GE..how much more do they need...:-(

Recanting...ugh! The deaths of those soldiers in Iraq will be on their heads forever as they dine in their fancy DC Restaurants and go home to the shining faces of the kids who may have to fight one day in the Hell that Bush/Blair have unleashed on the world. Or, will their kids be the lucky Harvard/Yale/Stanford group who once again can "opt out" of serving?

[kodi]

13. i was thinking today of how important "Media Whores Online" was in 2001-2

it was the premier site that digested the swill given out by the media pundits and showed them as naked, truth-buggering whores.

i miss it sorely, but that site spawned a number of watchdog sites that have been very important in combating the rightwing.

who ran that site is still a mystery, but i thought it was someone lke joe trippi and a few others.

[lebkuchen]

24. I thought I'd read somewhere that a woman had run it.

There was a request for her to get it back up again, but she has so far declined. Don't know why.

[KoKo]

33. They always seemed to take vacation at school vacation times...led me

to believe it was someone with a family, and I also heard it was a woman who ran it.

[Newsjock]

5. Holy obscenity!

I think this story might make me cry. The Post's run-up to war is one of the reasons why I no longer am a news editor at a daily newspaper.

When all of the questioning stories by Pincus et al. would move on the wire, I'd do my darndest to get some part of them onto our front page, or at least with a refer to an inside position. Then, the next day, my bosses would discover that the story had run in the Post on A18 or B26 or whatever, and they'd tell me that my news judgment was faulty and that I wasn't being properly patriotic. And, of course, readers were absolutely livid with us -- nobody else in our area was putting this stuff on the front page -- some weren't even running it in their papers at all. Our circulation plummeted, down several percent in the runup to war.

I finally got tired of the pain of being told that my lifetime of news judgment was suddenly invalid (and other factors at the job as well), and I moved to a less-stressful job at another (larger) newspaper, albeit at a net loss in pay after factoring in the cost of living.

First the New York Times atoned for their sins. That was good, but it didn't matter to us, because the paper I was at didn't subscribe to their news service. Now comes the Post, however, the source of the stories that I knew belonged on a front page seen by about 100,000 people every morning, including (presumably) one state governor.

And I can scream at the top of my lungs: "I am vindicated."

Yet, I'm the one who's now not pursuing his calling of true hard-news journalism. It's by no means bad here at this other newspaper, but I'm not making a difference. I tried to make a difference -- and I think I did, for many people -- but, good heavens, did I pay the price.

I'm mad, I'm ecstatic, I'm annoyed, I'm sad. I'm all those things. This story in the Post is something I never thought I'd live to see.

[frylock]

6. thanks for trying

[KoKo]

9. Newsjock...maybe it's the "Great Awakening" beginning. Did you see Ted

Turner's great piece about "My Beef With Big Media" posted in DU "Editorials" today?

It lays it all out..the corporate influence and what's going on from his own "corporate" experience as founder of CNN...There's so much there in his analysis, from all the "media deregulation" and what it's done.

When I read that article I understood why the hundreds or thousands of e-mails from those of us here on DU and other liberal sites seemed to never make a difference. When one reads that article one can understand.

But, it made me want to do more. Picket the news outlets..get out in the streets if they wont listen to us. But Turner did point out that all the Fax/Phone/e-mails sent to Michael Copps at FCC from all of us here and elsewhere DID MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE...and that they are aware there's a huge problem and folks are fighting back.

My local NC Congressman is on this and had his own hearing about Media DeReg supporting Copps back this Spring and just told us at a poltical gathering this week that they were shocked at the amount of private citizens and local indy media who showed up in outrage against FCC Media Consolidation. He said we thought we might have 25 people and it was over 500 and they spilled out in the halls outside the auditorium they had aquired. He said it's a huge issue with not only Democrats in NC but Repugs! He said we must keep at it as citizens by calling our Congresspersons/Senate and the FCC. He said they are aware because of the "millions" who contacted the FCC from private as well as NRA folks and that we have a chance of reversing this if we keep it up.

Better for you to have moved on..with less stress. If we can fix this,there will be a place for you when we throw the Corporate Media Whore Bums out on their Bum..

Give you praise for not having a stroke or heart attack over this. I

[splat]

10. vindicated

Good for you.

Why not send that great story to Romenesko?

Maybe it will be the start of making a difference again.

[Rose Siding]

11. You've learned something valuable!

You can trust yourself.

Have a good cry and keep your eyes open. It ain't over til it's over... to everything, a season...follow your bliss yada yada :hippie:

[amandabeech]

19. You fought the good fight, Newsjock. Thank you.

You have absolutely been vindicated. You can hold your head high, when those at the WaPo and NYT should be walking around with their chins on their chests.

My level of trust in these two formerly fine institutions of news reporting is virtually nill. Long gone are the days of Watergate and the Pentagon Papers.

Perhaps you should take over at the Post, Newsjock. They sure could use you.

[lostnfound]

21. Hear,hear!! nt

[Kahuna]

38. You are indeed vindicated, my friend..

:yourock:

[Eloriel]

40. Absolutely heartbreaking

But thank you from me too for fighting the good fight.

Damn. I actually feel similar to the way you do about this "news" -- glad, mad, pleased, pissed -- and I'm not even in the news biz.

Anyway, cheers: :toast:

[kodi]

7. what is it called to show courage after the battle?

the cheerleader role the media played in the run-up to the invasion of iraq is textbook chomsky on media control and the manufacturing of consent.

[Surf Cowboy]

36. Being a pussy.

[Lugnut]

8. How does it feel to have blood on your hands?

Bastards!

[grasswire]

12. geez

Liz Spayd, assistant managing editor for national news:

"Do I feel we owe our readers an apology? I don't think so."

Cold, cold.

[unfrigginreal]

14. Ah, the "I'm sorry you think we were wrong" apology

Liz Spayd, the assistant managing editor for national news, says The Post's overall record was strong.

"I believe we pushed as hard or harder than anyone to question the administration's assertions on all kinds of subjects related to the war. . . . Do I wish we would have had more and pushed harder and deeper into questions of whether they possessed weapons of mass destruction? Absolutely," she said. "Do I feel we owe our readers an apology? I don't think so."

Well, maybe you don't owe your readers anything Ms. Spayd, but what about the families of the thousands of dead?

In mid-March, as the administration was on the verge of invading Iraq, Woodward stepped in to give the stalled Pincus piece about the administration's lack of evidence a push. "We weren't holding it for any political reason or because we were being pressured by the administration," Spayd said, but because such stories were difficult to edit at a time when the national desk was deluged with copy. "People forget how many facets of this story we were chasing . . . the political ramifications . . . military readiness . . . issues around postwar Iraq and how prepared the administration was . . . diplomacy angles . . . and we were pursuing WMD. . . . All those stories were competing for prominence."

Understandable Ms. Spayd, it's not as if it were life and death urgency to get the story published.

"People who were opposed to the war from the beginning and have been critical of the media's coverage in the period before the war have this belief that somehow the media should have crusaded against the war," Downie said. "They have the mistaken impression that somehow if the media's coverage had been different, there wouldn't have been a war."

Yeah, why should we feel that non-stop publishing of the administrations propaganda would have anything to do with the public's backing of the war, a necessary prerequisite.

[KoKo]

16. WaPo and NYTimes doing MeaCulpa's. Maybe heads should roll rather

than "My fault, My fault...my grevious fault." :puke: on them...for being like the Bushies where no one is every held accountable because they stand together.

[IndianaGreen]

22. Judith Miller should be fired by NY Times!

She is the one that wrote a bunch of stories about WMDs with Ahmad Chalabi as her main, and sometimes only source.

Reassessing Miller
U.S. intelligence on Iraq's WMD deserves a second look. So does the reporting of the New York Times' Judith Miller.
By Jack Shafer
Posted Thursday, May 29, 2003, at 4:11 PM PT

The lead editorial in Monday's New York Times applauds the news reported in the Times' own pages that the CIA is reassessing the prewar intelligence about Iraqi's unconventional weapons programs collected by the CIA, the National Intelligence Council, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and other agencies. The editorial reads:

The failure so far to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the prime justification for an immediate invasion, or definitive links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda has raised serious questions about the quality of American intelligence and even dark hints that the data may have been manipulated to support a pre-emptive war.

If the government must re-examine whether data may have been "manipulated" to support the war, surely the New York Times should conduct a similar postwar inventory of its primary WMD reporter, Judith Miller. In the months running up to the war, Miller painted as grave a picture of Iraq's WMD potential as any U.S. intelligence agency, a take that often directly mirrored the Bush administration's view.

Now, thanks to the reporting of the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz, we understand why Miller and the administration might have seen eye-to-eye on Iraq's WMD. On the same day as the Times editorial appeared, Kurtz reproduced an internal Times e-mail in which Miller described Ahmad Chalabi, the controversial Iraq leader, former exile, and Bush administration fave, as one of her main sources on WMD.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2083736/

[KoKo]

34. Josh Marshall has her mentioned once again on his TP site. She's at it

again! She should be fired immediately. Who would believe a thing she says, but look at William Safire who has outright lied for years, but he's still there scribbling away.

There must be tremendous support for those two. But, keeping the pressure up exposing their lies might at least make them have to keep apologizing, although what good does an apology do, once their lies have done their damage.

[Catt03]

17. All this regret stuff is unconscionable

First the NYT with the Judith Miller FRONT page Chalabi propaganda; then the Washington Post and their weak explanation of incompetence.
They feel they have no responsibility for the war and deaths of Americans and thousands of other nationalities? Outrageous!

These are two newspapers where articles are picked up by almost every newspaper in the country plus the INTERNET.

The "free press" has changed dramatically over the last ten years,
The corporate owners are dictating their own skewed vision of democracy....they are killing it.

Something has to be done about these monopolies. Can't they be broken up like Bell or At&T? Is there any recourse for the public?

[IndianaGreen]

23. Our "free" press is fumbling the ball on the war in Iraq right now!

Our press has failed to convey the strong opposition of Iraqis to the continued presence of US and other foreign troops in their country. They are still repeating the bullshit line that we "liberated" Iraq. Just look at the front page of MSNBC the other day! They published a less than flattering picture of Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia cleric in Najaf, showing him at his darkest best and in need in dental work.

Pictures such as that are used as propaganda, to reassure the gullible and self-absorbed American public that we are the good guys and they are the bad guys. This is why we like despots that speak good English and that dress in business suits, people like Allawi or Egypt's Mubarak.

[KoKo]

18. kskiska , I've got a post about you over in "GD" Forum on my "nostalgia"

post for DU'ers who've been here since early days. I know you don't get over there, but you are one we've depended on for the early online editions of the WaPo and NYT's for "years" now...has it been that long?
Oh my...but anyway, you are appreciated.

[DeepModem Mom]

20. This time period also included the run-up to the mid-term elections...

during which Rove drove the Iraq issue as the only issue, resulting in a Republican rout at the polls. WP coverage, and that of other news sources, contributed to that devastating event as well.

[leftchick]

25. Skeptical Reports on WMDs and other WH* LIES were FRONT PAGE...

In MANY foreign newspapers in the Year before the war started. The US media absolutely refused to question the judgement of their imperial leader. Pfft! So much for a "free press"!

[Kahuna]

26. Eff you Woodward. You put writing your lousy book above the

good of the nation.

[dArKeR]

39. On Larry King, Woodward said, "We'll find double the WMDs in Iraq

which Bush has alluded to that's the rule." A month before the butchering. I personally saw Woodward say this on CNN International Larry King Live. I'm not sure if this was cut in America? But I'm the only one who've I seen state/post this anywhere. It's a fact so you reporters won't be wasting your time digging for the clips. Wooward is NSA/GOP mole or operative.

[Mari333]

27. My letter to the Washington Post:

Think they will print it???


My letter to the Washington Post
Dear Editor;
Howard Kurtz front page analysis and mea culpa regarding the 'war' coverage and lack of heady , hard hitting investigation amongst the larger newspapers, including the WP and the NYT, and their lack of questioning the policies of the Bush administration and their out and out lies leading up to this debacle, are bitter vindication for many of us out there in the vast wastelands of the US who have a son or daughter over in Iraq at this very moment.
I do. My stepson has been there since February. From the beginning of this fraudulent 'war', my husband and I both knew about the neocon agenda, their admiration for the insane philosophies of Leo Strauss, the Progress for the New American Century websites, the out and out lies about Niger yellowcake, the pumped up rhetoric billowing out of the White House, and nary a peep out of the media on these subjects. For months my husband and I screamed to high heaven on every forum we could about the lack of coverage in these areas, we were attacked on the street and screamed at, at the beginning of this 'war', even with a loved one in Iraq, because we chose to seek the truth. Two, over 50 parents, who dont work for a newspaper, were able to research effectively the agenda of the PNAC crowd over 3 years ago. It's not that hard, if you actually care.
In the meantime, almost 1000 soldiers, most of them kids our son's age, are dead. Thousands and thousands of civilians are dead. Thousands of soldiers and civilians are wounded, and now the media, either print, or television, beat their chest in horror at their own lack of investigative reporting . Too little, too late...Tell that to the mother and fathers who stay up all night crying and wondering if their child will survive another day. Tell it to the parent in Iraq who has just seen their baby blown to bits or lying in a ditch with their brains all over the roadway.
I have always known this 'war' was a lie. Bittersweet vindication now, that the media suddenly embraces a conscience. If anything bothers me in this country, at this time, it is how LACKING in concern and compassion people in the media, and even many in the populace of the US are, over the horrors of this war. To this day, the top brass and CEOs and editors of television and print media still froth at the mouth over ratings, monies, advertisers, and seem to be getting all their talking points straight from the Karl Rove's kitchen. The very fact no one seems to CARE about the destroyed lives of families, the nightly screams of a mom whose child was paralyzed from the neck down or killed by an IED...the everyday terror we live that our son wont come home, and we will never see him again. Empathy cannot be that hard, but evidently, for some people, it is.
People like Judith Miller of the NYT, who , at the beginning of this 'war', touted the glories of Chalabi, should be fired. The editors of each and every newspaper who refused to allow REAL investigations concerning the lies of the Bush administration, should be thrown onto the front lines along with our loved one to experience firsthand what it's like to see their 18 yr old friends lying on a road without legs and arms.
From the beginning of this lie of a war, my husband and I knew the truth. There were no WMD's, and the only time there were was when Rumsfield sold them to Saddam Hussein during the Reagan administration. I am not a reporter, but even I knew that little tidbit over a year ago.
Why is it that many of us out here in the so called heartland knew so much, and yet the media, including the print media, refused to go after all the lies with both barrels? Why did real, investigative journalism take a back seat to profit and scared, impotent editors?
If any one of the editors had a child over there, on the front lines, they may have taken a different stance on all of this. What in god's name is their motivation for not allowing journalists to go ahead and ask the real, hard hitting questions that needed to be asked?? Fear? of what?
They should live ONE night with the fear that their child might die in Iraq. ONE night. That is the fear we have lived with since February.
In the meantime, it's too late to save all of the children who have died , soldiers and civilians, because so many in the media were so unwilling, and so complacent in their own comfortable lives, that they were unable to allow themselves even a moment of empathy and compassion in a time when we , especially the families of the soldiers, needed for them to demand truth from the Bush administration, and hold them accountable.
I consider this one of the darkest times in US History, and I hold the press responsible for being part and parcel for allowing this fraudulent war to occur, and for not asking the questions that might have kept our son from being sent over to that nightmare.

[cybildisobedience]

29. excellent letter

Now, let's continue to take it to the media whores.
The only thing that's going to work with these people -- the only thing we can count on to shake them out of their bubble of arrogance and smug satisfaction -- is public humiliation.
When they get out of their limousines at black tie events to applaud themselves and tell each other what a wonderful job they're doing, they should be met with protestors holding up pictures of dead soldiers and signs: Their blood is on YOUR hands, too!
When they drive to work, they should see billboards that read: "yes, Liz Spayd, you DO owe the parents whose children died in Iraq an apology."
We should have people going up to them at restaurants and tossing pictures of bleeding soldiers and civilians onto their table, asking them if they're proud of their efforts to help Bush wage war.
I know it's harsh -- but really, what else can we do? They could care less if we write them a million emails and letters a week. They'll just ignore them. And the media "critics" like Kurtz are the biggest whores of all.
Who, ultimately, holds them accountable for their misdeeds and professional incompetence?
No one.

[Mari333]

30. Start throwing these pics at them

http://www.robert-fisk.com/iraqwarvictims_mar2003.htm

[otohara]

41. Fantastic Letter - bravo

I'll write one too - we should bombard them, bastards

[Eloriel]

42. Best thing I've read in months, Mari

It caused me to nominate this thread for inclusion on the front page -- first time I've done that.

[Barkley]

45. Write On! Mari333!

They better publish it (even though they don't deserve you)!


The press is still not doing their job when it comes to war casualties and challenging Bush/ Cheney on their continued remarks linking Saddam Hussein to OBL.

The media also ignored the more serious threats from North Korea.

The media are also buying into the notion that the resistance in Iraq is foreign based (Syria and Iran) and not home-grown resistance to the occupation.

If any of us performed like this on our jobs we'd be fired!

Great article!

[Cocoa]

28. Michael Moore has been saying this very well

in a rerun last night on Charlie Rose, Moore recalled a Rose program from before the war, where four of the five panelists were cheerleading the war, and Michael Kinsley dissented. Kinsley said, "I don't want to sound like the wimp of the group..." and another panelist (I wish I know which one) said, "you ARE a wimp."

[Beetwasher]

31. Kick for the DUH! Story of the Year!

Miserable failures. Goddamn miserable fucking failures. And they are STILL covering for these criminals. Traitors. Scum.

[Sparky McGruff]

32. He's gearing up for the new wave of skepticism

Should Kerry get elected, the media will have to become more skeptical. Any hair-brained criticism should get page one coverage for weeks on end, without bothering to investigate.

Bush, of course, deserves no investigation or criticism. But the pendulum has to swing back SOMETIME, right?

[kentuck]

35. Yes, they had shit on their faces.....

And now, they are rubbing it in their hair and all over their bodies by doing exactly what they did in hte run-up to the war. Now they are doing the work of the Repub attack machine by destroying the reputation of John Kerry and his war record as they ignore the noble war efforts of the present Commander in Chief. They should be horse whipped for betraying this nation.

[Surf Cowboy]

37. And between their ears...

[GOPFighter]

43. This is an important article

I firmly believe that the press must ALWAYS be skeptical of calls for war. They have a responsibility to the public to strip those calls of their emotion and examine the evidence, and report the truth. War is the most serious act a country can engage in. It must never be rushed into.

Our press let us down. They cowered in fear of being called unpatriotic, they shit bricks at the thought of losing subscriptions and sales. Corporate profits now drives our new morality. Give the masses what their fevered emotions want to hear; truth be damned!

Kick!

[PROGRESSIVE1]

44. The Discredited Whorington Post lost it's "Chief Whore" so...

many years ago and they are still Whoring scum.

:puke: