With the well-documented charges of negligence by former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke and with no WMD or Al Qaeda connection found in Iraq, new questions are being raised about why the media failed to ask tough questions of the Bush Administration on the subject of national security. Philip J. Trounstine, former political editor of the San Jose Mercury News, notes that the media "were complicit in gathering support for the war in Iraq and, in part, to a natural impulse, in the wake of 9/11, not to be disloyal to the nation." Not only did the mainstream networks freeze out critics of the Administration and refuse to challenge the White House, but as a new report from Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) notes, the right-wing media regularly packaged the White House's distortions and half-truths as fact, in a coordinated campaign to mislead the public. After Roger Ailes, head of Fox News, sent a personal note to President Bush advising him on his post-9/11 public image, the WP reported neoconservative Fox News contributors like William Kristol quickly became "well wired" into the White House in the lead up to war. They met periodically with top national security officials and "huddled privately" every three months with Karl Rove, who was urging conservatives to seek maximum political advantage from a war.
MAINSTREAM MEDIA – ADMITTING ITS OWN COMPLICITY: In a series of interviews, NYT White House reporter Elisabeth Bumiller recently admitted how intimidated the mainstream media had become after 9/11. Many had expected papers like the NYT (one of journalism's most prestigious outlets) to strenuously guard the media's historic watchdog role, particularly at a time of war and with an Administration bent on secrecy. But Bumiller admitted the media became "very deferential" and that reporters are now particularly loathe to challenge the President to his face because "it's live, it's very intense, it's frightening to stand up there." Ignoring polls which showed the nation split on the Iraq question, Bumiller said the Administration did a "spectacular selling job," and defended reporters' softball attitude, saying, "Think about it, you're standing up on prime-time live TV asking the president of the United States a question when the country's about to go to war. There was a very serious, somber tone, and no one wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time." Read American Progress's Eric Alterman's take on the absence of a responsible media.
MAINSTREAM MEDIA – BURYING CRITICAL STORIES: According to the New York Review of Books, "The nearer the war drew, the less editors were willing to ask tough questions." The few stories that provided a critical analysis of the Administration's war plans were buried in the back pages. And according to veteran WP reporter Walter Pincus, the placement of these stories was no accident: the Post's editors, he said, "went through a whole phase in which they didn't put things on the front page that would make a difference." But at least the Post actually published critical stories. The NY Review article notes, "The performance of the NYT was especially deficient. While occasionally running articles that questioned administration claims, it more often deferred to them."
RIGHT-WING MEDIA – LIES ABOUT WMD: As the new analysis points out, Fox News was complicit in spreading the myth that there was "no doubt" Iraq had WMD that posed an imminent/immediate/urgent/mortal threat to the United States. As early as August 2002, Fox News contributor Fred Barnes said, "We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that [Saddam Hussein] has been pursuing aggressively weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons." On March 23, 2003, Fox headline banners blared, "Huge Chemical Weapons Factory Found in Southern Iraq" - a claim that never panned out. On April 11, a Fox News report announced: "Weapons-Grade Plutonium Possibly Found at Iraqi Nuke Complex." Sourced to an embedded reporter from the right-wing (and Richard Mellon Scaife-owned) Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the story was soon debunked by U.S. officials. Bill O'Reilly claimed, "you cannot refute, and neither can anyone else" that "a load of weapons-grade plutonium has disappeared from Nigeria" and that Iraq is capable of giving that material to people "who will plant an atomic device, a nuclear device in a city in this country." O'Reilly fabricated the charge from a news report that Halliburton's Nigeria operation had misplaced not plutonium, but Americium, a compound wholly unsuitable for the creation of O'Reilly's "atomic device."
RIGHT-WING MEDIA – LIES ABOUT AL QAEDA-IRAQ CONNECTION: Despite no substantive evidence, Fox News contributor Fred Barnes began to echo the Administration's Saddam-Al Qaeda drumbeat as early as 2002, saying "the CIA now believes there's a real connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, the terrorist group that attacked the United States." He provided no evidence. Similarly, Fox's Sean Hannity claimed with no proof on 12/9/02 that al-Qaeda "obviously has the support of Saddam," ignoring an LA Times report that same month which stated "U.S. allies have found no links between Iraq and al Qaeda." Hannity later declared on 4/30/03, that he possessed documents proving a "direct link between Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network" and the Iraqi regime. He ignored a national Knight-Ridder report that month that senior U.S. officials confirmed they had found "no provable connection between Saddam and al Qaeda." Even after the UN and congressional 9/11 commission found otherwise, Fox News contributor Ann Coulter went on the air in September and said, "Saddam Hussein has harbored, promoted, helped, sheltered al Qaeda members. We know that." Today, intelligence agencies conclude there was no operational connection between Iraqand Al Qaeda. See American Progress's backgrounder.
