verbena-19

Wrong on Iraq? Not Everyone

Four in the mainstream media who got it right

In this article for FAIR, Steve Rendall writes that not everyone in the mainstream media got it wrong about pre-war Iraq WMD claims, and that it should not be used as an excuse for the MSM's failure. Thus, the MSM cannot be absolved of their gross incompetence and lack of fair, accurate reporting. No amount of mea culpas can wash the blood off their hands, as they gleefully, vociferously became pro-war proponents of the Bush administration and helped sway the gullible, post-9/11 public's opinion toward the illegal invasion of a sovereign state -- an invasion which has cost untold tens of thousands of lost Iraqi lives (the prestigious British journal Lancet conservatively estimated the Iraqi death toll at close to 100,000 and that was a year ago!) and 2,342 US troops (to date) with over 30,000 injured, maimed, as well as the lives of numerous foreign journalists, with the loss of lives escalating daily, the use of chemical weapons on innocent civilians, and the tortures of 'detainees' at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and elsewhere in US prisons. Meanwhile, the atrocities committed by the US upon innocent Iraqis in their homes, hospitals and throughout the country is beyond description! We're talking about women and children! American people, when will you wake up to the crimes being committed in your name?!

There is absolutely no excuse for this disastrous war and its tragic consequences. The MSM will have to bear the burden on their collective conscience for their complicity forever. Saying "we were all wrong" is a weak, spineless excuse. These shameful puppets are beyond contempt. Those few who did have the basic journalistic integrity to speak the truth are the 'real' journalists, who did their jobs by checking facts and holding the powerful accountable. After all, this is what journalists are supposed to do!

When former U.N. chief weapons inspector David Kay told the Senate Armed Services Committee in January 2004, “We were all wrong,” he was admitting that officials had been wrong to claim Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The we-were-all-wrong trope entered the political lexicon as a mea culpa, but today the White House and its media defenders employ it as a defense of a war started over phantom weapons. We may have been wrong, they argue, but so were the Clinton administration, congressmembers of both parties and other Western intelligence agencies.

Steve Randall further states:

But the fact that mainstream media in general suspended critical judgment when it came to reporting on pre-war Iraq claims should not be viewed as an excuse—because, in fact, not all mainstream journalists and pundits got it wrong. Some got it right—simply by carrying out the basic journalistic tasks of checking facts and holding the powerful to account.

Read the entire FAIR Extra! - March/April Issue article here.

FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting)

posted by Annamarie at 2:53 PM