Donnas right... Famed reporter criticizes Iraq tact DONNA WRIGHT Herald Staff Writer Carl Bernstein.
Journalist Carl Bernstein, who helped break the Watergate story three decades ago, told a Sarasota audience Wednesday that the Bush administration should seek to prevent a holy war, not start one.
The former Washington Post reporter spoke to a sell-out audience at Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall as a guest speaker in the Town Hall Lecture series, sponsored by Ringling School of Art and Design
"We need less attitude in Washington and more diplomacy," Bernstein said. "And I say this with real respect for George W. Bush . . . but I do not believe his theological rhetoric about good and evil is the best way of resolving the Iraqi conflict."
While he agreed Saddam Hussein must be removed, Bernstein criticized Bush for being very selective in whom he names among evil-doers.
"Our President doesn't talk about Saudi Arabia, he doesn't talk about Nigeria, where women are stoned because of adultery," Bernstein said. "He doesn't talk about the fact that most of these Iraqi arms we are trying to get rid of are the very arms and weapons that we gave to them."
Although he supports the build-up of troops in the Persian Gulf, Bernstein stopped short of endorsing an immediate attack on Iraq.
"I think there are other ways of getting rid of Saddam Hussein without going to war."
He advocated instead to give weapons inspectors a few more months to search for weapons of mass destruction. If those inspections fail, then the United States should go to war only through the United Nations and with European allies at our side.
"But Bush has complicated those alliances," he said. "It would be easier to make the case had we signed the Kyoto treaty on global warming. . . . Had we not given the Europeans an excuse to say we are unilateralists, unconcerned about the same things they are concerned on."
Bernstein reserved his most stinging criticism for fellow journalists - accusing them of abandoning the search for the best obtainable version of the truth for news that sells.
"Our stake in maintaining the myth and the attendant self-image that we are doing a great job is every bit as great a fiction as that of the American Congress serving the people," Bernstein said. "The gravest threat to the truth today may well be within our own profession."
He cited American media's coverage of worldwide peace demonstrations last weekend as an example of news without proper context.
"Whether we agree with those demonstrations or whether we believe they were out of line or wrong headed, these were huge events that are helping to shape what is happening in the United Nations and whether we go to war," he said. "Yet on television those demonstrations . . . were treated dismissively, condescendingly and patronizingly as if they were not important news."
Journalists must be willing to go after the hard stories, he warned, digging to find all of the facts and presenting them in broad context.
"But reporters can't do it alone," Bernstein said. "We need courage, we need willingness on the part of publishers to commit to finding the best obtainable version of the truth, however difficult that might be."
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