Page 83 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

Weapons of Mass Diversion 73

The paper's editors continued: "But we have found a number of instances of
coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been.. .Looking back, we
wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence
emerged."56
The Washington Post's account of its pre-war reporting on Iraqi WMDs
was a bit more critical than that of the New York Times. The Washington Post's
report on pre-war WMD framing, run in August of 2004, concluded that a
systematic bias in favor of the Bush administration was at play:

The Post published a number of pieces challenging the White House, but rarely
on the front page. Some reporters who were lobbying for greater prominence
for stories that questioned the administration's evidence complained to senior
editors who, in the view of those reporters, were unenthusiastic about such
pieces. The result was coverage that, despite flashes of groundbreaking
reporting, in hindsight looks strikingly onesided at timess7

Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks summarized: "Administration assertions
were on the front page. Things that challenged the administration were on A18
or ~24."~~ Former Washington Post assistant managing editor Karen Deyoung
informed the paper's readers that: "We are inevitably the mouthpiece for
whatever administration is in power. . . If the president stands up and says
something, we report what the president said." Deyoung explained that, when
statements contradicting official statements are printed, they often appear "in the
eighth paragraph, where they're not on the front page, a lot of people don't read
that far."59
In April of 2005, Washington Post staff writers admitted that U.S.
intelligence was "dead wrong" regarding Iraq's WMD capabilities6'
Nonetheless, this type of critical reporting was largely absent before the war,
when it would have mattered the most. One editor for the Washington Post
conceded that more critical pre-war news coverage would have been desirable.
"We could have done better," Bob Woodward argued: "We did our job but we
didn't do enough, and I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder. . . . We
should have warned readers we had information that the basis for [war] was
shakier.'"' And yet, the strong self-criticism apparent throughout the
Washington Post report was also accompanied by the assessments of reporters
and editors who highlighted what they felt were strong points in pre-war
coverage. Much of the Washington Post's apology was dedicated to deflecting
criticisms that the paper over-valued official sources while downplaying or
ignoring challenges to the Bush administration's war claims. Woodward
defended his paper by arguing that "We had no alternative sources of
information," as reporters "couldn't go to Iraq without getting ki~led.''~ Liz
Spayd, another assistant managing editor justified the paper's pre-war coverage
by claiming: "I believe we pushed as hard or harder than anyone to question the
administration's assertions on all kinds of subjects related to the war. . . . Do I
wish we would have had more and pushed harder and deeper into questions of
whether they possessed weapons of mass destruction? Absolutely. Do I feel we
owe our readers an apology? I don't think ~0.'"~