WMDs but didn't tell anyone.
I also know who's going to win the most gold medals
but I'm not going to tell you until it's over.
Why would anyone read that right-wing rag anyway?
-sm
--- Howie Hamlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> NEW YORK -- The Washington Post yesterday joined the
> conga line of respected U.S. news organizations
> apologizing for flawed reporting in the runup to war
> in Iraq last year, publishing a front-page story by
> media reporter Howard Kurtz that called the paper's
> coverage "strikingly one-sided at times."
> The article immediately became the focus of
> discussion among U.S. journalists, since the Post's
> coverage of the Bush administration's case for war
> had not been widely perceived as especially weak.
>
> In his 3,000-word article, Mr. Kurtz said Post
> editors tended to relegate pieces that criticized
> the Bush administration's war plans and the
> rationale for invading Iraq to the back pages of the
> paper.
>
> He quoted executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. as
> saying the Post was "so focused on trying to figure
> out what the administration was doing that we were
> not giving the same play to people who said it
> wouldn't be a good idea to go to war and were
> questioning the administration's rationale. Not
> enough of those stories were put on the front page.
> That was a mistake on my part."
>
> Assistant managing editor Bob Woodward told Mr.
> Kurtz that no journalist wanted to challenge the
> belief that weapons of mass destruction existed in
> Iraq, in case weapons were later found. "I think it
> was part of the group-think."
>
> The Post's unusual mea culpa follows publication in
> May of an extensive editor's note in The New York
> Times that said the paper had been too quick to
> believe claims about Iraq's possession of weapons of
> mass destruction.
>
> Executive editor Bill Keller's note ran on an inside
> page. "Editors at several levels who should have
> been challenging reporters and pressing for more
> skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops
> into the paper," he wrote.
>
> Yesterday, Mr. Kurtz said the genesis of his piece
> was different. He told the on-line edition of the
> trade magazine Editor & Publisher that he had
> assigned it to himself, and said it met with no
> meddling from the paper's editors.
>
> The articles follow months of criticism from those
> who say the U.S. news media were too willing to
> publish faulty information supplied by
> administration allies.
>
> In an on-line chat session yesterday, Mr. Kurtz
> noted that stories about Iraq's purported possession
> of banned weapons were particularly hard to report.
> "You couldn't go to Iraq . . . you had to rely on
> sources, many of whom couldn't go on the record and
> all of whom were relying on shadowy intelligence,"
> he wrote. "That doesn't excuse the shortcomings of
> the media in general and The Post in particular, but
> this was not easy stuff."
>
> Mr. Kurtz said it was beyond the paper's abilities
> to determine whether the administration's claims
> were true. "We couldn't have definitively settled
> the question," he wrote. "We could have done a
> better job of questioning the administration's
> evidence and given greater prominence to those with
> minority views."
>
> Representatives of the three major U.S. television
> networks yesterday said their news divisions were
> not engaged in formal reassessments of coverage.
>
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