International Action Organization

The New York Times, All The News That Fits

 By Lila Schow
July, 2004

A year and a half ago, during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, two institutions held vastly different opinions about taking this nation to war, again.  The New York Times pushed for it, while International Action Organization (IAO) warned repeatedly against such a devastating course of action.

Jodie Hemerda, cofounder of IAO, recalls the impact of the activism community on the public before the war to be as if “[we were] awake in the middle of the night where practically everyone around [us] slept silently while America fell down around us.” (Hemerda, June 12, 2004)

Vastly different from IAO, the Times held sway over millions, shaping the public’s opinion and encouraging a thirst toward bloodshed.  Then, on Wednesday, May 26, 2004, The New York Times issued an apology of sorts for coverage “that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged - or failed to emerge.”¹

The apology goes on to list five instances where “[a]rticles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.”¹

It is interesting to compare the findings of The New York Times against those of IAO for those five articles.  The accusations contained in those articles: terrorist training at Salman Pak, defectors claims of bio-warfare factories, Iraq’s attempts to build nuclear weapons, and the anticipated use of chemical weapons on the eve of war—were all refuted before the start of the war by IAO’s four articles: Eleven Iraqi Myths, Who Should We Fear, Deception of the American Public, and The Crude Facts.

How can this be?  How can The New York Times, with its seasoned reporters, money, influence, reach, sources and access run articles containing insultingly untrue accusations?  How can they lump themselves into a group they claim got duped into supporting a "cunning campaign”² by those who gained from a war in Iraq?

The paper’s apology came in December 2003, after a change in public editors.  The New York Times forced out Howell Raines after the paper caught heat over the discovery that journalist Jayson Blair “had invented some stories and plagiarized others over a lengthy period.”² Raines was replaced by Daniel Okrent who wrote the editorial apology.

Already disturbed by the absence of WMDs in Iraq, the double-dealings of Iraqi National Congress (INC) leader Ahmad Chalabi became an embarrassment the paper could no longer avoid.  The suspension of payments by our government to Chalabi and the subsequent invasion of his home led many to question the validity of his statements as well as the integrity of the numerous sources he provided for the Bush Administration and The New York Times.

According to Okrent, “Accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted.”¹  These problematic articles “depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on 'regime change' in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks.” ¹

Okrent ends his fourteen-paragraph apology with a vow. “We consider the story of Iraq's weapons, and of the pattern of misinformation, to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight.” ¹

How did the reporting of The New York Times go so very wrong?  Who is to blame?  And has Okrent kept his promise of revealing war coverage failures along with providing aggressive journalism?

The downward spiral of the prewar coverage comes, in part, from the decision of The New York Times to never question contradictory statements by those driving us to war.  In February 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed "We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more."⁵ An odd statement considering that only two years earlier during his February 24, 2001 press conference Powell had stated “[Hussein] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.”⁵  

The same is true of National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice. During a July 29, 2001 interview on CNN's Late Edition she said, “But in terms of Saddam Hussein being there, let's remember that his country is divided, in effect. He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.”⁵  

What happened in the two years between these interviews and our invasion of Iraq?  How did Hussein suddenly obtain chemical and biological weapons in a world committed to fighting terrorists and keeping items like WMDs away from such criminal leaders?  No Times journalist reported or questioned this reversal in information from the Bush Administration.  Instead they bought Washington’s new line and strove to support it.

Problem two in The New York Times, Okrent explains, came from playing “quietly as a lullaby”⁸ articles which “provided perspective or challenged information in the faulty stories.”⁸ One such example, James Risen's C.I.A. Aides Feel Pressure in Preparing Iraqi Reports which highlighted the coercion of the CIA by the Bush Administration to find a reason for war was “completed several days before the invasion and unaccountably held for a week. It didn't appear until three days after the war's start, and even then was interred on Page B10.”⁸

In slanting their coverage, the Times fell prey to the control of those who gained from a war with Iraq. A former CIA analyst explained to Guardian journalist James Moore how easy it had been to manipulate The New York Times, most notably, Times reporter Judith Miller.

The White House had a perfect deal with Miller. Chalabi is providing the Bush people with the information they need to support their political objectives, and he is supplying the same material to Judy Miller. Chalabi tips her on something and then she goes to the White House, which has already heard the same thing from Chalabi, and she gets it corroborated. She also got the Pentagon to confirm things for her, which made sense, since they were working so closely with Chalabi. Too bad Judy didn't spend a little more time talking to those of us who had information that contradicted almost everything Chalabi said."³

Miller responded to accusations that her research was not as diligent as required for a Times reporter by stating, “I reported what I knew at the time. I wish I were God and had all the information I had needed. But I'm not God ... All I can rely on is what people tell me." ³

Miller’s journalistic instincts drove her to believe Chalabi, a convicted embezzler running from a prison sentence viewed with credible distrust by the CIA³, over Scott Ritter who served as chief weapons inspector for the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) in Iraq.⁴

Ritter claimed the UN inspectors destroyed 90-95% of Iraq's WMDs during their seven year inspection program.  He argued “that it would be impossible for Iraq to build new weapons in the three years since inspectors left, without being detected.” ⁴  However, the Times ignored this highly credible expert, preferring Chalabi, a man who built his future on the removal of Hussein.

In the months before the war, Ritter’s vocal warnings on the absence of WMDs in Iraq were given no coverage by the Times.  In fact, the paper published only one article about Ritter, a film review titled Arms Inspectors in Iraq, The Last Time Around. Located in the Arts section in December 2003, the article was an unfavorable critique of a film Ritter created using UNSCOM footage in Iraq to dispel the belief of Iraq’s WMD program.  

Meanwhile, Chalabi appeared in an astounding thirty-seven articles since September 11^th, most highlighting the need for a war with Iraq.  Reporter Judith Miller even credits him with being the anonymous source for most of her front page articles.⁶

Okrent explains the paper’s bigoted preference in sources, “Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried” or perhaps not even reported at all.¹

When it comes to deciding who is to blame for the pro-war hype that sabotaged the journalism of the most influential paper in the Untied States, Okrent became evasive preferring to focus on the Times as a whole. “The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter.” ¹  His lack of finger-pointing may seem admirable, but only if the policies that allowed the yellow journalism to overtake the staff are removed.

A quick check of The New York Time’s Sample of the Coverage page reveals something interesting.  Judith Miller is responsible for 9 of the 17 pro war articles highlighted for sensational, unverified hype of Iraq’s threat to Americans. Okrent’s refusal to discipline Miller for her rudimentary journalistic failures, gives the green light for such abuses to continue. 

That none of the official tips or the ones provided by Miller revealed WMDs indicates that 1) the Iraqis perfectly expunged every site Miller ever mentioned in her reporting prior to the U.S. invasion; or 2) her sources were full of bunk. Either way, if Miller got taken by her coveted sources, so did the reading public, and the Times owes its readers a review of Miller's many credulous pieces. (Read the stories by Miller reviewed by MSN).⁶

As for Miller, her articles lay the burden of accountability for WMD claims on her sources, as she “never asserted that Iraq had an illegal WMD program or a stockpile of banned weapons.”⁶  Yet, Miller accepted payment for public speaking engagements where she pushed for the US to go to war, clearly an ethical compromise.⁷  She also rocketed to fame in the months before the war with her sensational headlines and stories.  To keep her on without censure discredits Okrent’s apology and his promise of professional reporting. 

That promise is in danger, even excluding the problem that is Judith Miller.  After taking on the job as publishing editor last September, Okrent has only published three articles that follow up on the “unfinished business” of Times reporting.   

A month has passed since the public apology, and he has followed up on nothing else.  So what of his plans for aggressive, balanced reporting?  Though Okrent feels “that The Times' standard procedures were cast aside in the weeks before and after the war began,”⁸ he still has taken only some of the steps needed to pull the paper back to a respectable level of coverage. 

Recently, the 9-11 commission released a report dismissing the Bush Administration’s claims of an Iraq-al Qaeda link.  This is singularly important to The New York Times.  Aside from the false WMD claims, no other strategy did more to justify and advance the cause for war than the histrionics that Hussein played a role in the 9-11 terrorist attacks. 

Again, The New York Times helped build this belief in the minds of the American public. “Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, fewer than 5 percent of Americans believed Iraq was somehow involved. When the war in Iraq started, that had grown to 70 percent.”⁹ The deception of the public was greatly helped by stories such as the Times February 6, 2003 Intelligence Break Led U.S. to Tie Envoy Killing to Iraq Qaeda Cell, by Patrick E. Tyler.  A story, according to Okrent, that was one of many pushing “Pentagon assertions so aggressively you could almost sense epaulets sprouting on the shoulders of editors.”⁸

In accordance with Okrent’s vow of aggressive reporting, The New York Times has been covering this Iraq-al Qaeda scandal. The Times has called on the Bush Administration to prove Cheney’s assertion that he “probably”¹⁰ has evidence the 9/11 Commission didn’t, that would prove an Iraq-al Qaeda connection.  The Times pushed Cheney, accusing “when it comes to Iraq, blind faith in this administration has been a losing strategy.”¹¹

Clearly disturbed by the paper’s switch in loyalties, Cheney attacked the Times during an interview with CNBC, "They do a lot of outrageous things. The [New York Times] wants to run out and say there's a fundamental split here now between what the president said and what the commission said."¹³

Later in the interview, Cheney discussed the credibility of a Czech intelligence service report that claimed lead hijacker Mohammad Atta met a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Prague in April 2001, a major piece of evidence in the Bush Administration’s Iraq-al Qaeda link. Cheney defends using the report, saying the credibility allegations have "never been proven."¹³

The New York Times ran an article detailing the interview, however when they reached Cheney’s comments regarding the secret Prague meeting they fail to disclose that phone and credit card records show Atta in Florida at the time, AND “[b]oth the FBI and the CIA deny that Mohammad Atta ever left the United States in April, 2001”¹⁵, or that “[e]ven the Prague government … has officially stated the meeting didn’t happen.”¹⁵

There can be no doubt over the importance of the revelation that there is no link between Iraq and al Qaeda.  Even after the 9-11 Commission broke the story, the Bush Administration continued to push the lie they insinuated into the October 2002 Congressional order invoking war powers against Iraq.

[A]cting pursuant to this joint resolution is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.¹²

After the 9-11 Commission’s report, Bush defended himself on his prior statements. “The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda: because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda. For example, Iraqi intelligence officers met with bin Laden, the head of Al Qaeda, in the Sudan. There's numerous contacts between the two.”¹³ The New York Times covered this story yet their aggressive journalism failed to make clear that the sole example Bush used was actually “a series of exchanges in 1994 when bin Laden sought the use of facilities in Iraq and Saddam Hussein rebuffed him.” ¹²

Also missing in any coverage of the 9-11 Commission report is the extreme importance of these misrepresentations.  With “the collapse of the other major lie used to justify the war—the claim that Iraq possessed huge and dangerous stockpiles of chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons”¹² one outside adviser to the White House warns, “[i]f you discount the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, then you discount the proposition that it’s part of the war on terror. If it’s not part of the war on terror, then what is it—some cockeyed adventure on the part of George W. Bush?”¹⁴  Continuing in the prewar tradition, no follow-up on the import of that theme has surfaced.

The importance of the paper in our society cannot be understated. The New York Times “publishes The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe and 16 other newspapers; owns eight network-affiliated television stations and two New York radio stations ... Over the years, The Times Company's properties have been awarded many journalism awards, including a total of 111 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other news organization.”¹⁶

Several swing states are currently influenced by the paper and their affiliates, such as Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Florida and Wisconsin. 

And the paper’s reach goes beyond just their affiliates. MSN reporter Michael Kinsley feels that:

much or even most American news reporting and commentary on national issues derives—uncredited—from the New York Times. Even if you don't read the Times yourself, you get your news from journalists at other media who do. The Times sets the news agenda that everyone else follows. The Washington Post and maybe one or two other papers also play this role, but even as a writer who appears in the Washington Post—a damned fine newspaper run by superb editors who are graced with every kind of brilliance, charm, and physical beauty—I would have to concede that the Times is more influential. It's not just the agenda setting. Our basic awareness of what is going on in the world derives in large part from the Times.¹⁷

The conclusion made by these failures in journalism is that The New York Times has a long way to go to clear their name and regain their journalistic integrity. While it is true they have stepped up their reporting, they are still falling short of holding the Bush Administration accountable for sending out a continuous line of lies.   

*A conniving career criminal in Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist,  Fagin takes in homeless children and trains them to pick pockets for him. He is also a buyer of other people’s stolen goods. He rarely commits crimes himself, preferring to employ others to commit them—and often suffer legal retribution—in his place.

 Sources 

1.        New York Times The Times and Iraq From The Editors Wednesday 26 May 2004 http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/052704C.shtml

2.        Reuters N.Y. Times Says Became Part of the WMD Iraq Story  Saturday May 29 2004 http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/053104L.shtml

3.        The Guardian U.K. How Chalabi and the White House held the front page By James Moore Saturday 29 May 2004 http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/053104L.shtml

4.        CalTech Understanding the Roots of Terrorism: Iraq as a Case Study Scott Ritter Wednesday November 13, 2002 http://www.sass.caltech.edu/events/ritter.shtml

5.        The Memory Hole 2001: Powell & Rice Declare Iraq Has No WMD and Is Not a Threat http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/powell-no-wmd.htm

6.        MSN The Times Scoops That Melted Cataloging the wretched reporting of Judith Miller. By Jack  Shafer July 25, 2003 http://slate.msn.com/id/2086110

7.        Editor and Publisher Miller's Star Fades (Slightly) at 'NY Times' By William E. Jackson, Jr. October 02, 2003

8.        New York Times Weapons of Mass Destruction? Or Mass Distraction? By DANIEL OKRENT May 30, 2004, Sunday 

9.        Star Tribune Editorial: The meaning of 'is'/Bush takes lesson from Clinton June 19, 2004 http://www.startribune.com/stories/561/4835617.html

10.     Washington Post, Al Qaeda Link To Iraq May Be Confusion Over Names 6/22/2004, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1261934&l=41727.

11.     The New York Times Show Us the Proof Editorial June 19, 2004

12.     WSWS Caught by 9/11 panel in lie over Iraq-Al Qaeda ties, White House responds with more lies By Patrick Martin 22 June 2004 http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jun2004/bush-j22.shtml

13.     The New York Times Bush and Cheney Talk Strongly of Qaeda Links With Hussein By DAVID E. SANGER and ROBIN TONER  June 18, 2004

14.     The New York Times Leaders of 9/11 Panel Ask Cheney for Reports By PHILIP SHENON and RICHARD W. STEVENSON June 19, 2004

15.     International Action Organization  The Iraq - al Queda Link By Lila Schow July, 2003 http://www.interactorg.com/al_queda_link.htm

16.     The New York Times Corporate Website http://www.nytco.com/company.html

17.     MSN Sympathy for the New York Times Often plagiarized. Seldom plagiarizing. By Michael Kinsley May 21, 2003, at 10:41 AM PT http://slate.msn.com/id/2083377/

The Times and Iraq: A Sample of the Coverage

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