On the Iraq War, the press failed the public
By James O. Goldsborough
Having ignored the lessons of history, President Bush bears ultimate responsibility for the failure in Iraq.
But what of the press? Did newspapers ignore the lessons of history as well? As the public's watchdog, did we bark loud enough as Bush's plans took shape, or were we dozing?
Newspapers can't make policy, but by endorsing or condemning it we help shape public opinion. Newspapers can rally a nation to war or not just as arts reviewers rally audiences or not to a book or film. Informed criticism is necessary to good government as well as to good art.
My subject here is daily newspapers, the some 60 million copies sold each day across the nation, ranging from million-a-day giants like USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times to the nation's smallest dailies, like the Bisbee (Ariz.) Daily Review (circ. 995), and the Dowagiac (Mich.) Daily News (circ. 1,818).
Network television lacks the conscience of the press. When Walter Cronkite told the nation Feb. 27, 1968, it was time to come home from Vietnam, the shock was that a network, licensee of public airwaves, would allow a news anchor to speak out.
The nation's 1,500 newspapers, representing about that many towns and cities across the nation, aren't government licensees. We have freedom the networks lack.
How did we use that freedom in the period leading up to war in Iraq?
Three press reports show we made poor use of it.
A year ago, as war was about to begin, Editor & Publisher, the professional weekly, did an analysis showing that among the top 50 daily newspapers, not one editorial page was "strongly anti-war." In other words, the nation's watchdogs failed to provide context or balance to the war-whooping taking place on talk radio and cable television.
This month, the Columbia Journalism Review provides an analysis of editorial pages on six of the most influential U.S. newspapers. It concludes that not one of them "held the Bush administration to an adequate standard of proof when it came to launching not just a war, but a pre-emptive war opposed by most of the world."
The six newspapers examined are: The Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. Though most of these dailies have historical memories stretching beyond the Vietnam War, not one of them suggested that, in Iraq, we risked walking into another quagmire.
The third press analysis deals with news stories, not editorials. The New York Review of Books, in three separate editions, published an exchange between press analyst Michael Massing and reporters and editors at The New York Times and Washington Post. This exchange involved Massing's charge that Post and Times reporters and editors were too complaisant toward the Bush administration, failing to research or question Bush allegations that proved to be false.
The thrust of these three critiques is that newspapers – small and large, news pages and editorial pages – helped create public support for a war fought on false pretenses. "All these papers are on notice," concluded defense and intelligence expert Thomas Powers in the Columbia Journalism Review. "They've seen what happened. They were hustled."
When not one major newspaper questions a war as dubious as this one – leaving it to a handful of columnists to question the motives, tactics and strategy behind the war – maybe "hustled" is the right word.
Why did so many foreign newspapers – even in nations like Britain and Spain whose governments backed the war – refuse to be hustled? Why did American newspapers, which learned in Vietnam and Watergate the importance of questioning official statements, roll over on Iraq?
Unlike the two reports on editorial pages, Massing's NYRB article focuses on reporters and editors. He singles out Knight-Ridder papers "almost alone," for taking a "hard look" at Bush justifications for war.
In letters to the NYRB editor, reporters on The New York Times and Washington Post challenge Massing's charges, but the conclusion one must draw is that with reporters and editors so complaisant it's not surprising that editorial pages, relying on news reports, went along with Bush, too.
There were nuances among the newspapers critiqued by these authors. The difference in tone, for example, between the Wall Street Journal's pro-war editorials, which CJR author Chris Mooney calls "verging on xenophobic" (war is good for Wall Street); and the Washington Post's editorials, which worried about "postwar uncertainties," was significant.
The Post, alone among major newspapers, did a postwar mea culpa on its absence of editorial questioning.
In the nation where investigative journalism was invented, each of these newspapers let itself be "hustled" into supporting war on the basis of faulty information. That information concerned Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, its ties to al-Qaeda and its alleged threat to America.
Even in matters of war – especially in matters of war – Vietnam taught us, watchdogs must be vigilant.
Goldsborough can be reached via e-mail at jim.goldsborough@uniontrib.com.
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