Home > N.Y. Times apology feels hollow
Toronto Star
MEGAN BOLER The New York Times has publicly
acknowledged errors in its reporting on Iraq. Less an
apology and more an attempt to cover journalistic
humiliation, the editors confess: "Looking back, we
wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the
claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge."
(Editorial, May 26.)
While one wants to celebrate the historically momentous
occasion of the "newspaper of record" admitting its
lack of rigour and careful scrutiny of sources, for
many this "apology" feels empty and hollow. Too little,
too late. Too many people dead. Too many hungry. Too
many orphans and too many mass graves. Too much ink
wasted and airtime purchased to ensure the Bush
administration’s horrific and never justified invasion
of Iraq.
Belated apologies carry a unique dissatisfaction that
is semi-paralyzing and functions to silence further
those to whom the apology is overdue. If one isn’t
grateful, one is bitter and resentful. Yet forgiveness
seems impossible.
It is not unlike the classic gendered story: The
secretary of the CEO suggests a good idea at a meeting
and no one responds. A few moments later, a man in the
meeting suggests the same thing and everyone applauds
his great idea. Thousands of us have had the brilliant
idea that the N.Y. Times, among other news sources, was
failing its journalistic responsibility, but now the
editors get to claim this lauded notion.
For those of us who have questioned the coverage all
along, who are part of that unpatriotic "minority" who
questioned the invasion of Iraq and even Afghanistan,
who read international and independent news, we are
left with the haunting sense of living in a twilight
zone. A twilight zone, because we have been calling and
writing letters not just to the Times but to NPR
(National Public Radio), FOX and CNN since Sept. 11 to
demand that a greater diversity of sources and experts
be allowed to speak. Even without FAIR’s (Fairness &
Accuracy in Reporting) latest survey that shows that 64
per cent of NPR’s sources are "elite" — conservative
and Republican spokespersons of the administration and
corporations — we have demanded that media examine
their systematic misinformation.
The N.Y. Times and dozens of other media underreported
the millions of anti-war protesters in the U.S. and
internationally who took to the streets month after
month to oppose this invasion. In fact, NPR and the
N.Y. Times corrected their numbers on the count of war
protesters in 2002. Meanwhile, they did correctly
report President George Bush stating that he doesn’t
attend to these protesters because that would be like
basing "public policy on a focus group."
Prior to the invasion of Iraq, Newsweek ran a story
questioning WMD. A veteran CBC reporter recently
confessed to a public audience his deep concern that
reporters have adopted a herd mentality,
unquestioningly following the easy story. He confessed
that reporters ignored Newsweek and instead fed the
public Colin Powell’s photo op with the small vial
"proving" that Saddam Hussein had WMD.
The "easy" story means parroting White House briefings
and feeding those as objective news. Even international
newspapers generally critical of U.S. foreign policy
are guilty of spoon-feeding live feed from the Pentagon
when they elect to run AP and other mass media stories.
At the HotDocs film festival in Toronto last month,
there were three excellent documentaries regarding the
unseen aspects of war reporting. These films included
The Control Room (Jehane Noujaim) on Al Jazeera; War
Feels Like War (Esteban Uyarra) on unilateral
reporters’ experience in Iraq; and Michael MacLear’s
Vietnam: Ghosts of War that details how little the
media and the military alike know about the actual
justifications of war.
Where is the wool coming from, and exactly whose eyes
is it being pulled over? To blame reporters for poor
reporting is misleading. More important is to identify
the less visible editorial and production — and even
stockholders’— influence on when, how and what gets
reported.
The N.Y. Times admission cannot help but smell like
last-minute political jockeying to distance itself from
an increasingly unpopular Bush administration.
Meanwhile, though one might like to celebrate the N.Y.
Times admission of error as a positive historical
turning point in the management of media institutions,
it is almost impossible to swallow this "apology" and
not sniff something rotten. What really tipped the
balance, and will we ever know? How can one not suspect
that the prison abuse scandal, the call for Donald
Rumsfeld to be fired, and Bush’s plummeting public
favour aren’t reason for the Times to jockey into a new
political liaison? To gain face and realign with new
elite sources come the next presidency — corruption and
cowardice with a different but gaunter face.
What goes on behind the media’s closed doors, where the
media embed with the highest military officials, which
newspapers are in whose pockets — these are the stories
apparently not "sensational" enough for our public eyes
to see.
Megan Boler is associate professor in
Theory and Policy Studies at OISE/University of Toronto.