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Let's hear from James Risen, reporter at the Times at the time. :) > What angered me most was that while they were burying my skeptical stories, the editors we
by ctoth 4y ago
Let's hear from James Risen, reporter at the Times at the time. :)
> What angered me most was that while they were burying my skeptical stories, the editors were not only giving banner headlines to stories asserting that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, they were also demanding that I help match stories from other publications about Iraq’s purported WMD programs. I grew so sick of this that when the Washington Post reported that Iraq had turned over nerve gas to terrorists, I refused to try to match the story. One mid-level editor in the Washington bureau yelled at me for my refusal. He came to my desk carrying a golf club while berating me after I told him that the story was bullshit and I wasn’t going to make any calls on it.
As a small protest, I put a sign on my desk that said, “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.” It was New York Journal publisher William Randolph Hearst’s supposed line to artist Frederic Remington, whom he had sent to Cuba to illustrate the “crisis” there before the Spanish-American War. I don’t think my editors even noticed the sign.
So no, this wasn't just poor old Judy, who provided a convenient scapegoat. You ask for what protections a blog has? Its protection is that it's a darn blog on the internet just like any random person can make. It has no authority, asks for no special recognition. Whereas the flagship paper sends goons with golfclubs to threaten writers into following the narrative.
The original comment I'm responding to asks for examples of corporate media being more wrong for longer. If starting a literal war 15 years ago doesn't count I'm not sure what you're looking for.
- epgui 4y ago> You ask for what protections a blog has? Its protection is that it's a darn blog on the internet just like any random person can make. It has no authority, asks for no special recognition. Except in a universe where there are no news organizations and only blogs, then blogs will naturally attain a similar amount of influence, but with even fewer checks and balances, and probably lesser liability/responsibility. This is just a natural consequence of the graph-theoretic properties of social networks. If we agree that the media started the war (just for the sake of argument), then yes, it does count, it seriously counts and it counts for a lot. But you've selected one of the most extreme examples, in a sea of otherwise unremarkable examples. When we talk about an org's track record, we're not hoping to find zero mistakes: we're really hoping to find relatively few mistakes, and accountability and recognition of important mistakes. Also perhaps a self-correction mechanism. I'm not saying any of that is perfect, but legitimate news orgs do have some of that.
- seattle_spring 4y ago> If starting a literal war 15 years ago So you're asserting that without The NYT, the Iraq war would have never happened at all? I'm not sure how else to interpret your claims.