Media Too Soft on White House

Newsday - August 1, 2003

U.S. Media Are Too Soft on the White House

By Norman Solomon

This summer, many journalists seem to be in hot
pursuit of the Bush administration. But they have an
enormous amount of ground to cover. After routinely
lagging behind and detouring around key information,
major American news outlets are now playing catch-up.

The default position of U.S. media coverage gave
the White House the benefit of doubts. In stark
contrast, the British press has been far more vigorous
in exposing deceptions about Iraq. Consider the work of
two publicly subsidized broadcasters: The BBC News has
broken very important stories to boost public knowledge
of governmental duplicities; the same can hardly be
said for NPR News in the United States.

One of the main problems with American reporting
has been reflexive deference toward pivotal
administration players like Donald Rumsfeld, Colin
Powell and Condoleezza Rice. Chronic overreliance on
official sources worsened for a long time after 9/11,
with journalists failing to scrutinize contradictions,
false statements and leaps of illogic.

Powell’s watershed speech to the United Nations
Security Council in February was so effective at home
because journalists swooned rather than drawing on
basic debunking information that was readily available
at the time. To a great extent, reporters on this side
of the Atlantic provided stenography for top U.S.
officials, while editorial writers and pundits lavished
praise.

The most deferential coverage has been devoted to
the president himself, with news outlets treating
countless potential firestorms as minor sparks or one-
day brush fires. Even now, George W. Bush is
benefitting from presumptions of best intentions and
essential honesty - a present-day "Teflonization" of
the man in the Oval Office.

Midway through July - even while Time’s latest
cover was asking "Untruth & Consequences: How Flawed
Was the Case for Going to War Against Saddam?" - the
president told reporters: "We gave him a chance to
allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in.
And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided
to remove him from power." Bush’s assertion about
Hussein and the inspectors - that he "wouldn’t let them
in" - wasn’t true. Some gingerly noted that the
statement was false. But the media response was mild.
The president openly uttering significant falsehoods
was no big deal.

Meanwhile, reporting on the deaths of U.S. troops
in Iraq has been understated. Editor & Publisher online
pointed out that while press accounts were saying 33
American soldiers had died between the start of May and
July 17, "actually the numbers are much worse - and
rarely reported by the media." During that period,
according to official military records, 85 U.S.
soldiers died in Iraq. "This includes a staggering
number of non-combat deaths ... Nearly all of these
people would still be alive if they were back in the
States."

In a follow-up, editor Greg Mitchell reported that
his news analysis had caused "the heaviest e-mail
response of any article from E&P in the nearly four
years I have worked for the magazine." He added, "These
weren’t the usual media junkies or political activists,
but an apparent cross-section of backgrounds and
beliefs." Some of the letters were from relatives and
friends of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The strong reactions
indicate that American deaths are apt to be politically
explosive for the 2004 presidential campaign.

Contradictions have become more glaring at a time
when the war’s rising death toll already includes
thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of Americans. Many
U.S. news organizations are beginning to piece together
a grim picture of deceit in Washington and lethal
consequences in Iraq. The combination foreshadows a
difficult media gauntlet for Bush.

Another key political vulnerability that remains
underreported is the economy. Its woes persist in the
context of a huge gap between the wealthy and most
other Americans - a gap that is set to widen still
further due to the latest round of White House tax
changes and spending priorities. Ironically, this
summer’s resurgence of Iraq-related coverage could
partly overshadow dire economic news in the coming
months. It’s deja vu, with a big difference.

Last summer, the Bush team successfully moved the
media focus from economic problems to an uproar about
launching a war on Iraq. That was a politically
advantageous shift that endured through Election Day.
Now, with concerns about Iraq and the economy again
dominating front pages, it remains to be seen whether
news outlets will accelerate the search for truth or
slam on the brakes.

Norman Solomon, co-author of "Target Iraq: What the
News Media Didn’t Tell You," is executive director of
the Institute for Public Accuracy.

Norman Solomon<mediabeat@igc.org

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