My weekly newspaper column: Busting the lapdog press

[flowomo]

MODS: This is my column; I have reprint permissions as long as credit is given to The Sentinel.

Also available online at:
http://www.cumberlink.com/articles/2007/04/27/editorial/rich_lewis/lewis73.txt

Busting the lapdog press
By Rich Lewis, April 27, 2007
The Sentinel, Carlisle, PA
Last updated: Friday, April 27, 2007 10:05 AM EDT

In my journalism classes, I stress to my students the importance of a free press in protecting the public against the misdeeds of the powerful. The paradigm case, of course, is that vast array of crimes known collectively as “Watergate” — and the celebrated work of Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein and others that was vital in uncovering Richard Nixon’s efforts to undermine our democratic system.

But Watergate is just one example. Year after year, the press fulfills its watchdog mission by sounding alarms about greed, incompetence and cruelty at the highest levels of government, business and other centers of power. For example, the horrendous conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center were brought to light recently by Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and Anne Hull.

But the importance of the press is revealed not only in its successes, but in its failures — and in that sense, the special edition of “Bill Moyers’ Journal” that aired on PBS Wednesday night should be shown in every civics class in the country.

In “Buying the War,” Moyers explains how the mainstream media — newspapers, television and magazines — failed to question the now-discredited claims the Bush administration used to propel the country into war in Iraq. Worse, the press actively promoted those claims — turning false and distorted evidence into headlines that frightened the American public and generated a tidal wave of popular support for the war.

Greg Mitchell, the editor of Editor & Publisher, the newspaper industry’s leading journal, called the 90-minute documentary “devastating,” and said it was “the most powerful indictment of the news media for falling down in its duties in the run-up to the war in Iraq.”

Moyers shows how the White House leaked false or questionable information to friendly reporters such as Judith Miller of the New York Times — and then used the subsequent news stories to “prove” its case. These “circular, self-confirming” leaks created the illusion of fact and a momentum toward war that swept all questioning aside. As Moyers put it, “The press and the government became inseparable.”

Stories claiming that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, or had actively cooperated with Al-Qaeda, made the front page. Stories casting doubt on those claims were buried deep inside or ignored. Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz told Moyers, “From August 2002 until the war was launched in March 2003, there were about 140 front-page pieces in the Washington Post making the administration’s case for war... but there was only a handful — a handful — of stories that ran on the front page that... raised questions.”

Eventually, “What the White House was now marketing as fact, would go virtually unchallenged,” Moyers noted. “Throughout the fall of 2002 high officials were repeating apocalyptic warnings with virtually no demand from the establishment press for evidence.”

The most damning aspect of the situation is that many experts inside and outside the government knew the administration claims were false — and these experts were readily available to the press. Few reporters bothered to call them.

But why did this happen? Why did the press, democracy’s bulwark against government lies and manipulation, simply stop doing its job and became an extension of the White House press office?

Because it had “become unfashionable to dissent from the official line,” Moyers explains. “Unfashionable and risky.”

Indeed, those who questioned the administration were likely to be targeted for punishment, “and every journalist knew it,” former CBS news anchor Dan Rather told Moyers.

Among those helping to drive out opposing voices was Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly. “I would call those who publicly criticize their government at a time of military crisis, which this is, bad Americans,” O’Reilly declared with Orwellian belligerence. “Anyone who hurts this country at a time like this, well, let’s just say, you will be spotlighted.”

NBC’s liberal talk-show host Phil Donohue often featured guests critical of the administration’s arguments. He was abruptly fired 22 days before the war started. An internal memo later surfaced in which NBC management said that Donohue presented “a difficult public face for NBC” because “our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.”

Donohue was dismissed because he was viewed as “not only unpatriotic, but bad for business.”

When politicians in Washington spread the pro-war message, their statements made the front page or led the evening newscasts. But, as writer Eric Boehlert told Moyers, when Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy “gave a passionate speech in 2002 raising all sorts of questions about the war,” the Washington Post gave the speech “one sentence, 36 words.”

And so the press ran away from the fight — chickened out. The war machine rolled on.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll last week asked: “All in all, considering the costs to the United States versus the benefits to the United States, do you think the war with Iraq was worth fighting, or not?”

Sixty-six percent of those responding said it was not worth fighting.

The tragedy is we might have known this before we got ourselves hopelessly trapped in Iraq — and Moyers leaves no doubt the press must share the blame for this catastrophic mistake.

The journalists and editors who so shamelessly abdicated their responsibilities will be judged as harshly by history as the government they failed to check.

Rich Lewis' e-mail address is: [e-mail]