Page 82 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

72 Chapter 3

claims) ensures tilted reporting and prevents the widespread incorporation of
anti-war views in favor of pro-war ones.

From Imminent Threat to Intelligence Error

After the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent laborious and time-consuming
search for weapons of mass destruction, the U.S did not come any closer to
finding the mystery weapons of mass destruction. The Duelfer Report (a
congressional commissioned study) concluded, according to the New York
Times, that, "Iraq had no factories to produce illicit weapons," and that "its
ability to resume production was growing more feeble each year."5' With the
administration's credibility on the line, it attempted, alongside the major media,
to portray the WMD charges as part of a broader "intelligence error," rather than
based upon outright deception. The establishment press increasingly blamed
"bad intelligence," while offering occasional criticisms of their own reporting.
Critiques offered throughout papers like the New York Times and Washington
Post revealed that the papers' editors felt they had generally done a decent job in
reporting on the wMD Issue before the war, although there were some serious
mistakes. As mentioned above, the emphasis became one of examining
"misguided" intelligence rather than systematic manipulation and
misinformation regarding WMD.
The emphasis on "bad intelligence" was a mainstay of post-invasion
coverage. In the view of many editors, reporters, and owners, the administration
had made a mistake in making the case for war based upon an imminent Iraqi
threat, rather than knowingly lied to the public. On May 26,2004, the New York
Times editors printed an analysis of their own coverage of the buildup to the war
in Iraq. They stated that there had been a general "failing of American and allied
intelligence."52 The Los Angeles Times offered similar remarks in October of
2004, when evidence surfaced of a CIA document revealing that Saddam's
supposed purchase of uranium from Africa was falsified. The Los Angeles Times
reported that these sources from the CIA show "fresh evidence of
misjudgments" by intelligence agencies-rather than outright manipulation,53
and that the Bush administration had relied on "misconceptions," rather than
fabrications regarding Iraqi weapons.54
The New York Time's apology that ran in March of 2004 appeared at times
to represent a defense of pre-war reporting, rather than a moment of critical
introspection. The paper's editors reflected that:

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 informati~n.~~