For many years, health-conscious Americans avidly consumed margarine as
a wholesome substitute for artery-clogging butter. Only later did research
shed light on grim effects of the partially hydrogenated oil in margarine,
with results such as higher incidences of heart disease.
Putting our trust in bogus alternatives can be dangerous for our
bodies. And for the body politic.
For many years, staples of the highbrow American media diet have
included NPR News and the New York Times. Both outlets are copious and seem
erudite, in contrast to abbreviated forms of news. And with conservative
spin widespread in news media, NPR and the Times appeal to listeners and
readers who prefer journalism without a rightward slant.
Recent developments, however, add weight to evidence that it would be
unwise to have faith in news coverage from NPR or the New York Times.
The myth of “liberal” National Public Radio has suffered a big blow.
Days ago, the media watch group FAIR (where I’m an associate) released a
detailed study of NPR indicating that the network’s overall news coverage
leans to the right. The documentation is extensive and devastating.
Consider a key aspect of the research:
* “FAIR’s study recorded every on-air source quoted in June 2003 on
four National Public Radio news shows: ‘All Things Considered,’ ‘Morning
Edition,’ ‘Weekend Edition Saturday’ and ‘Weekend Edition Sunday.’ ...
Altogether, the study counted 2,334 quoted sources, featured in 804
stories.”
* The findings on news coverage debunk the persistent claims that NPR
is a liberal network. “Despite the commonness of such claims, little
evidence has ever been presented for a left bias at NPR, and FAIR’s latest
study gives it no support. Looking at partisan sources -- including
government officials, party officials, campaign workers and consultants --
Republicans outnumbered Democrats by more than 3 to 2 (61 percent to 38
percent).”
* The new results are in line with a previous FAIR study, released in
1993. Back then, the Republican tilt in sourcing was also pronounced: “A
majority of Republican sources when the GOP controls the White House and
Congress may not be surprising, but Republicans held a similar though
slightly smaller edge (57 percent to 42 percent) in 1993, when Clinton was
president and Democrats controlled both houses of Congress.”
Every day, millions of Americans listen to NPR News -- and many
presumably trust it as a balanced source of information and analysis.
Likewise, millions of people are in the habit of relying on the New York
Times each day, whether they’re reading the newspaper itself or Times news
service articles that appear in daily papers around the country.
On May 26 -- a year and a half after publishing front-page articles
that boosted the momentum toward an invasion of Iraq -- the New York Times
printed a 14-paragraph “From the Editors” note that finally acknowledged
there was something wrong with the coverage. But the unusual new article,
appearing under the headline “The Times and Iraq,” indicated that top
editors at the newspaper still refuse to face up to its pivotal role in
moving the war agenda.
The Times semi-apology is more self-justifying than self-critical.
Assessing a page-one December 2001 article that promulgated a bogus tale
about biological, chemical and nuclear weapons facilities in Iraq, the
editors’ note says that “in this case it looks as if we, along with the
administration, were taken in.” The same tone echoes through an internal
memo to the Times newsroom from the paper’s executive editor, Bill Keller,
on May 26: “The purpose of the [published] note is to acknowledge that we,
like many of our competitors and many officials in Washington, were misled
on a number of stories by Iraqi informants dealing in misinformation.”
But in many respects the Times editors were no more “taken in” or
“misled” than Bush administration officials were. They wanted to trumpet
what they were told by certain dubious sources, and they proceeded
accordingly. For the readers of the Times, that meant disinformation -- on
behalf of a war agenda -- was served up on the front page, time after time,
in the guise of journalism.
Keller’s internal memo explains that the editors’ public article “is
not an attempt to find a scapegoat or to blame reporters for not knowing
then what we know now.” The phrasing was seriously evasive. A comment from
FAIR, posted in the “Media Views” section of its website, pointed out: “If
Keller thinks the problem with Judith Miller’s reporting was her lack of
clairvoyance rather than her failure to exercise basic journalistic
skepticism, then it’s clear that he didn’t learn much from this fiasco. He
describes the publication of the editor’s note as ‘a point of journalistic
pride’ -- as if a publication should be proud of acknowledging egregious
errors that other people have been pointing out for more than a year.”
Unnamed in the Times editors’ note was Judith Miller, the reporter who
wrote or co-wrote four of the six articles singled out as flawed. Miller
often didn’t let her readers know that she was relying on the Pentagon’s pet
Iraqi exile, Ahmad Chalabi.
Tardy by more than a year, the semi-mea-culpa article by the Times
editors -- while failing to provide any forthright explanation of Chalabi’s
role as a chronic source for Miller’s prewar stories -- appeared a week
after the U.S. government turned definitively and publicly against its exile
ally Chalabi. Only then were the top New York Times editors willing to turn
definitively and publicly against key Times stories spun by the
Chalabi-Miller duo.
More revealing than they evidently intended, the editors’ article
repeatedly lumped together two institutions -- the New York Times and the
U.S. government -- as though they were somehow in comparable situations
during the lead-up to the war. The excuses for both were sounding remarkably
similar. So, the Times editors insinuated that they, along with top
officials in Washington, were victims rather than perpetrators:
“Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for
misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations --
in particular, this one.”
While the May 26 article “From the Editors” took a step toward setting
the record straight, it did so while sidestepping responsibility. There’s
some symbolism in the fact that -- unlike the indefensible front-page Times
stories it belatedly critiqued -- the editors’ note appeared back on page
A-10.
A terrible truth, still unacknowledged by the New York Times, is that
the newspaper did not “fall for misinformation” as much as eagerly jump for
it. And no amount of self-examination, genuine or otherwise, can possibly
make up for the carnage in Iraq that the Times facilitated.
_________________________________
Norman Solomon is co-author, with foreign correspondent Reese Erlich, of
“Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn’t Tell You.”
_________________________________
Background links:
FAIR’s new study, “How Public is Public Radio?”:
http://www.fair.org/extra/0405/npr-study.html
Greg Mitchell, of Editor & Publisher, on the Times editors’ note:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0526-09.htm
