[R-G] [NYTr] The Times Apologizes for Iraq Coverage

[David Mcreynolds]

Remarkable - I haven't been out yet today to get my copy of the Times, but
will pass this along to folks I know will be interested.
As always, thanks for your enormous output, "up with which I cannot keep".

David


> [Original Message]
> From: <nytr at tania.blythe-systems.com>
> To: <nytr at tania.blythe-systems.com>
> Date: 5/26/2004 12:09:16 PM
> Subject: [NYTr] The Times Apologizes for Iraq Coverage
>
> Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
>
>
> [Despite the paper's unwillingness to name names (like Chemical Judith
> Miller) and their self-justification throughout this piece, this is still
an
> extradordinary apology from The New York Times for their truly dreadful
> reporting on Iraq leading up to the Bush war. However, "...we fully intend
> to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight,"
they
> say, although it's perfectly clear from their own note that they have not
> done aggressive reporting, and have dutifully repeated the
administration's
> lies right along, from their terrible coverage of Iraq for the past
decade,
> to the lead-up to the war, to Colin Powell's mendacious speech to the UN
> (which they reported with serious credulity).--NY Transfer]
>
>
> The New York Times - May 26, 2004
> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/international/middleeast/26FTE_NOTE.html
>
> FROM THE EDITORS
>
> The Times and Iraq
>
> Over the last year this newspaper has shone the bright light of
> hindsight on decisions that led the United States into Iraq. We have
> examined the failings of American and allied intelligence, especially
> on the issue of Iraq's weapons and possible Iraqi connections to
> international terrorists. We have studied the allegations of official
> gullibility and hype. It is past time we turned the same light on
> ourselves.
>
> In doing so reviewing hundreds of articles written during the prelude
> to war and into the early stages of the occupation we found an
> enormous amount of journalism that we are proud of. In most cases,
> what we reported was an accurate reflection of the state of our
> knowledge at the time, much of it painstakingly extracted from
> intelligence agencies that were themselves dependent on sketchy
> information. And where those articles included incomplete information
> or pointed in a wrong direction, they were later overtaken by more and
> stronger information. That is how news coverage normally unfolds.
>
> But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as
> rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was
> controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently
> qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we
> had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence
> emerged or failed to emerge.
>
> The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but
> many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on
> information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles
> bent on "regime change" in Iraq, people whose credibility has come
> under increasing public debate in recent weeks. (The most prominent of
> the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an
> occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has
> introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of
> hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of
> information from Iraqi exiles, until his payments were cut off last
> week.) Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these
> exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials
> convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials
> now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these
> exile sources. So did many news organizations in particular, this one.
>
> Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame on
> individual reporters. Our examination, however, indicates that the
> problem was more complicated. Editors at several levels who should
> have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were
> perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper. Accounts of Iraqi
> defectors were not always weighed against their strong desire to have
> Saddam Hussein ousted. Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended
> to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the
> original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases,
> there was no follow-up at all.
>
> On Oct. 26 and Nov. 8, 2001, for example, Page 1 articles cited Iraqi
> defectors who described a secret Iraqi camp where Islamic terrorists
> were trained and biological weapons produced. These accounts have
> never been independently verified.
>
> On Dec. 20, 2001, another front-page article began, "An Iraqi defector
> who described himself as a civil engineer said he personally worked on
> renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear
> weapons in underground wells, private villas and under the Saddam
> Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as recently as a year ago." Knight Ridder
> Newspapers reported last week that American officials took that
> defector his name is Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri to Iraq earlier this
> year to point out the sites where he claimed to have worked, and that
> the officials failed to find evidence of their use for weapons
> programs. It is still possible that chemical or biological weapons
> will be unearthed in Iraq, but in this case it looks as if we, along
> with the administration, were taken in. And until now we have not
> reported that to our readers.
>
> On Sept. 8, 2002, the lead article of the paper was headlined "U.S.
> Says Hussein Intensified Quest for A-Bomb Parts." That report
> concerned the aluminum tubes that the administration advertised
> insistently as components for the manufacture of nuclear weapons fuel.
> The claim came not from defectors but from the best American
> intelligence sources available at the time. Still, it should have been
> presented more cautiously. There were hints that the usefulness of the
> tubes in making nuclear fuel was not a sure thing, but the hints were
> buried deep, 1,700 words into a 3,600-word article. Administration
> officials were allowed to hold forth at length on why this evidence of
> Iraq's nuclear intentions demanded that Saddam Hussein be dislodged
> from power: "The first sign of a `smoking gun,' they argue, may be a
> mushroom cloud."
>
> Five days later, The Times reporters learned that the tubes were in
> fact a subject of debate among intelligence agencies. The misgivings
> appeared deep in an article on Page A13, under a headline that gave no
> inkling that we were revising our earlier view ("White House Lists
> Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons"). The Times gave voice to skeptics
> of the tubes on Jan. 9, when the key piece of evidence was challenged
> by the International Atomic Energy Agency. That challenge was reported
> on Page A10; it might well have belonged on Page A1.
>
> On April 21, 2003, as American weapons-hunters followed American
> troops into Iraq, another front-page article declared, "Illicit Arms
> Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert." It began
> this way: "A scientist who claims to have worked in Iraq's chemical
> weapons program for more than a decade has told an American military
> team that Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare
> equipment only days before the war began, members of the team said."
>
> The informant also claimed that Iraq had sent unconventional weapons
> to Syria and had been cooperating with Al Qaeda two claims that were
> then, and remain, highly controversial. But the tone of the article
> suggested that this Iraqi "scientist" who in a later article described
> himself as an official of military intelligence had provided the
> justification the Americans had been seeking for the invasion.
>
> The Times never followed up on the veracity of this source or the
> attempts to verify his claims.
>
> A sample of the coverage, including the articles mentioned here, is
> online at nytimes.com/critique. Readers will also find there a
> detailed discussion written for The New York Review of Books last
> month by Michael Gordon, military affairs correspondent of The Times,
> about the aluminum tubes report. Responding to the review's critique
> of Iraq coverage, his statement could serve as a primer on the
> complexities of such intelligence reporting.
>
> We consider the story of Iraq's weapons, and of the pattern of
> misinformation, to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to
> continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight.
>
> Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
>  
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