Turning American Media Into Pravda

The release of the Senate Intelligence Committee's Phase II report, describing in great detail the lies and deceptions made by the Bush White House in the run-up to the war - is perhaps most notable for what it DIDN'T cover, like the activities of the White House Iraq Group, assembled precisely to sell the war to the public, or the effort to bully intelligence agencies into offering misleading or incomplete data that sided with the White House's views. The report is useful but really a simple analysis that measures the Administration's public statements against known facts, which any blogger with "the Google" could have done.

The Administration has responded to these charges by saying that we're all just upset because it was so successful. But what's interesting is how the summary of White House lies has rankled those inside the media who bought whatever Bush and Cheney were selling in 2002 and 2003, and who don't want to be tarred with that same brush of propaganda, even though that's precisely what they deserve. And so you have idiots like Fred Hiatt compounding the lies by trying to claim that the Phase II report didn't say what it said.

Hiatt:

On Iraq’s nuclear weapons program? The president’s statements “were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates.”

The actual report (pg. 15):

(U) Conclusion 1: Statements by the President, Vice-President, Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor regarding a possible nuclear weapons program were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates, but did not convey the substantial disagreements that existed in the intelligence community.

Hiatt:

On weapons of mass destruction overall (a separate section of the intelligence committee report)? “Generally substantiated by intelligence information.”

The actual report (pg. 49):

(U) Conclusion 5: Statements by the President, Vice-President, Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense regarding Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction were generally substantiated by intelligence information, though many statements made regarding ongoing production prior to late 2002 reflected a higher level of certainty than the intelligence judgments themselves.

Hiatt:

Unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to deliver WMDs? “Generally substantiated by intelligence information.”

The report (pg. 57):

(U) Conclusion 8: Statements by the President, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of State that Iraq was developing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that could be used to deviler chemical or biological weapons were generally substantiated by intelligence information, but did not convey the substantial disagreements that existed in the intelligence community.

And in another tactic, you have duped editorialists like Nick Kristof saying that the reason he didn't speak up against the war was because of the lack of meaningful Democratic Party opposition, which neatly ignores the majority of Democrats in the House and 21 Democrats in the Senate who voted against authorization, as well as those pesky 15 million protesters in February 2003 (present company included).

There's a lot of self-protection going on here, with media figures wanting to absolve themselves of any blame for the worst foreign policy disaster in US history. But on the margins, you're starting to see some journalists come to terms with the failure of their profession, like Ruth Rosen of the San Francisco Chronicle.

I worked as an editorial writer at The San Francisco Chronicle, where a liberal editorial board raised serious objections to the war. And yet, in the years following 9/11, I felt editorial restraints that never allowed us to tell the whole truth about the lies and deception that led to America's most catastrophic foreign policy disaster [...]

Let me give you some examples. I was raised in a Republican family, but schooled by the great iconoclastic journalist I.F. Stone, who taught me that you can find the truth without inside sources, if only you're willing to see beyond patriotic fervor and examine voices in the public domain that are marginalized, So, I would read national security experts who countered Donald Rumfeld's ridiculous predictions; I would read the British, Canadian, Italian and French press; I would read the writings of experts in resource wars and weapons of mass destruction.

No, I didn't know I was right. But I was sure that the administration was lying. And, I knew that at the very least that our editorials should be asking why Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al should be believed when I had found strong evidence that they were cherry picking intelligence, and setting up their own office in the Pentagon, and acting in complete secrecy [...]

To its credit, the editorial board raised some of the toughest questions in the mainstream media. And yet....I was the only one who didn't believe Colin Powell's shameful presentation at the United Nations. Why? Not because I had special insider knowledge, but like I.F. Stone, I had found credible people who could dissect his speech and found it unconvincing and unpersuasive [...]

This week, I sat with a former colleague from the editorial board in a café, rather than in the room where we used to make our editorial decisions. He admitted that I had been right, but even more, that even in a liberal paper, the editor and most of the board, had felt restrained, afraid of seeming unpatriotic, afraid of saying the emperor wore no clothes, afraid of not giving the President the benefit of the doubt, afraid of truth telling without access to inside sources.

Unfortunately for Rosen, being right is bad for her career, and remaining in the editorial consensus results in failing upwards, and never getting called on the equivalent of war crimes that people like Tom Friedman committed on the public. This raises a larger question about the corporate takeover of the media and how their agendas end up reflecting what gets covered and what doesn't. Conglomerates who profit from war are in no mood to resist it, and conglomerates who want to maintain their credibility would never toss out the bulk of their staffs who were entirely wrong. Fortunately there's a movement dedicated to restoring an independent media and returning the power of knowledge back to the people. Dan Rather spoke at it, and Bill Moyers had a great moment when he turned the tables on a Fox News flunky that tried to ambush him, which you just have to see.



It's called the National Conference for Media Reform, and it's our last best hope as a nation to get the press we deserve. As for the war criminals who led us down a path to destruction, there's always a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.