Fears Impacted U.S. Reporting on Iraq ( lessons learned )

The Las Vegas Sun ^ | March 20, 2004 at 4:55:47 PST | MIELIKKI ORG

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Today: March 20, 2004 at 4:55:47 PST

Fears Impacted U.S. Reporting on Iraq

By MIELIKKI ORG
ASSOCIATED PRESS

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) -

Competitive pressures and a fear of appearing unpatriotic discouraged journalists from doing more critical reporting during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, according to reporters and others at a conference on media coverage of the war.

The journalists on the panels at the University of California at Berkeley this week blamed the Bush administration for leaking faulty information, but said the media also has itself to blame for not being more skeptical about the case for war.

"The press did not do their job," said Michael Massing, who wrote an article in the New York Review of Books that found The New York Times and The Washington Post particularly at fault.

Journalists fear they will be seen as unpatriotic if they challenge White House statements, said Robert Sheer, a syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

"There is no doubt that there is an atmosphere of fear in the media of being out of sync with the punitive government," Sheer said.

Much of the criticism focused on a Sept. 8, 2002, New York Times article by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon, which said Iraq was importing aluminum tubes that could be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium, a critical step in making an atomic bomb.

Massing said nuclear experts or weapons inspectors would have refuted the evidence had the Times consulted them. Experts later verified the tubes were not used for nuclear weapons, but The New York Times and other papers buried that news in their inside pages, he said.

Massing noted that a phrase from the article - "The first sign of a smoking gun may be a mushroom cloud" - made it into a speech given by President Bush in the fall of 2002, days before Congress gave him war powers, as well as speeches by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell to justify the war.

A call to the Times for comment was not immediately returned on Friday.

John Burns, the Times' bureau chief in Baghdad, speaking by satellite phone from Iraq, said American reporters are doing a good job of covering the war's aftermath.

In fact, reporters accused of being insufficiently critical are going too far in the other direction when they suggest Iraq is already descending into chaos and civil war, Burns said. He called it "a growing deception among the press and others that there is an air of error and disillusion" in Iraq.

The only government representative at the conference that ran Tuesday through Thursday was Lt. Col. Rick Long, a Marine Corps spokesman. He deflected accusations that the Pentagon decision to embed about 700 journalists with troops fighting in the Iraq war allowed the government to influence their coverage.

"The reason we embedded so many journalists is that we wanted to dominate the information environment," Long said. "We wanted to beat any kind of disinformation or propaganda by beating them at their own game."

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[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

This is interesting but likely has a somewhat hidden agenda since Robert Sheer, a syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times was in attendance and got his name in the column from Berkely.

[sd-joe]

What a bunch of BS.

[John Thornton]

The only time the Ivory Tower crowd criticizes the media is for being "too conservative." Which means being not totally supportive of the current Democrat talking points.

[anniegetyourgun]

"Competitive pressures and a fear of appearing unpatriotic discouraged journalists from doing more critical reporting during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq...

It is exactly because the press is competitive and unpatriotic that caused them to be critical of the liberation of Iraq. They are now lying to themselves.

[vbmoneyspender]

Talk about cognitive dissonance. To leftists reporters, the fact that Hussein was routinely firing missiles at our pilots did not constitute a legitimate ground for going to war.

[Gorzaloon]

The journalists on the panels at the University of California at Berkeley this week blamed the Bush administration for leaking faulty information, but said the media also has itself to blame for not being more skeptical about the case for war. "

Comforting Thought:

Korean Missiles might be able to reach Berkeley.

[AF68]

Much of the criticism focused on a Sept. 8, 2002, New York Times article by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon, which said Iraq was importing aluminum tubes that could be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium, a critical step in making an atomic bomb.

I'm still not buying the story peddled by Saddam and the leftist media, that these tubes, made to exacting tolerances, were meant for missile bodies. I've seen firsthand the junk that the Iraqis used for missiles.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

fear of appearing unpatriotic

Our mainstream press? If they didn't appear unpatriotic we would not be able to see them.

Gee, no mention of CNN's Eason Jordan's New York Times Op-Ed article admitting that CNN refrained from reporting truthfully about Saddam Hussein all through the 1990s-plus. ABCNNBCBS helped greatly to spread the lies about U.S. sanctions killing 9,000,000,000,000 Iraqi children every day while Uncle Saddam fretted. The free press let us know that he was fretting because he was running out of room to store tons of dollars.

If the AP employee was a real reported he would have mentioned this.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Right, but I would be concerned about collateral damage. ( Livermore mainly!)

[baseballmom]

said Robert Sheer, a syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

Robert Sheer, is the most rabid Bush hating leftist there is. I wouldn't trust him to give me a straight story if my life depended on it.

Burns, of the NYT did a good job.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Sheer is a an out and out commie.

[Rome2000]

There is no doubt that there is an atmosphere of fear in the media of being out of sync with the punitive government,"

Paranoid leftist imbecile.

Carrying on as if he and his fellow com-symps are "disappearing".

They're not worth the trouble.

[Tabi Katz]

They also seem somehow convinced that we have lost the war, never mind that we have Hussein in custody.

[Yardstick]

Fears impacted U.S. reporting on Iraq

This is such a corny usage of this word. I wonder if the AP style manual has anything to say about this.

[My2Cents]

Oh, I see, so the media is now admitting they reported out of "fear," in other words, that they are a pack of cowards. Well, it's about time...But isn't it convenient that they make this startling admission in the context of their appeasement agenda.

[Bernard Marx]

Any panel that has Scheer on it can only be a communist propaganda tool. When you combine Scheer and Berkeley, Lord save us all!

[Carolinamom]

Did they also admit to their own laziness?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Meanwhile in Europe we have:

Reporter following trail of corruption in EU arrested

[Lancey Howard]

He deflected accusations that the Pentagon decision to ....embed about 700 journalists with troops fighting in the Iraq war allowed the government to influence their coverage.... "The reason we embedded so many journalists is that we wanted to dominate the information environment," Long said. "We wanted to beat any kind of disinformation or propaganda by beating them at their own game."

In other words, "embed" so many reporters that none of them can get away with lying unless all 700 collude on the lie. Perfect.

[Southack]

"Journalists fear they will be seen as unpatriotic if they challenge White House statements, said Robert Sheer, a syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

"There is no doubt that there is an atmosphere of fear in the media of being out of sync with the punitive government," Sheer said."

Oh...My...God...

It is Robert Scheer, not "Sheer" and he isn't just a syndicated columnist, but rather is a dedicated Communist who PRAISED NORTH KOREA'S WONDERFUL PROSPERITY who is married to one of the owners of the LA Times itself!

Sheesh. This is how far "higher" education has sunk, that AP reporters at UC Berkeley no longer even have the wherewithal to get a simple name or fact correct at any level.

On a side note, the national education test results were released last month for grades 1 through 12, and Alabama made it into the top 50% for its first time. Sadly, our poor rural state only cracked into the top half of all school results because so many other states have fallen so far in their standards and in their results.

Our high school students are head and shoulders above the AP reporters at UC Berkeley, for instance, but that's only because colleges such as Berkeley have fallen so far.

Total for this search: $1,000

Contributor	Occupation	Date	Amount	Recipient
SCHEER, ROBERT SANTA MONICA,CA 90403	COLUMNIST	10/30/2000	$1,000	Kucinich, Dennis J