Four Years On: Probing Press Failures in Run-Up to War

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003536806

Exactly four years ago this week, E&P, then still a weekly, carried a cover story titled UNANSWERED QUESTIONS, with the deck: “In grip of war fever, has the press missed the mark on Bush and Iraq?” Next to it was a picture of the president in an Army jacket in front of a microphone, with soldiers behind him.

The “special report” inside carried this headline: “ON THE WAR PATH: As public opinion swirls, the press must dig deeper for answers to key questions surrounding the likely attack on Iraq.” It included a series of articles raising questions about the war coverage.

Around here, we thought this might be a "landmark" issue. But, sad to say, E&P was one of the few national “mainstream” magazines or newspapers taking a consistently skeptical view of the arguments for the invasion of Iraq – which ranged from the reality of Saddam’s WMDs to the certainty of being greeted as liberators by the Iraqis. In fact, in this same Jan. 27, 2003 issue, we also published a hard-hitting interview with Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg in which he accurately predicted nearly everything that would go wrong.

We kept raising questons -- about the war, and about the coverage -- right up to the invasion two months later, and beyond, and to this day.

To mark the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the real run-up to the war – and in hopes of helping inspire more skeptical coverage by newspapers next time around – we republish below our cover story in that Jan. 27 issue. Looking back, it can make you wince, but also ponder. Consider the warning from a national columnist that “the vast majority of journalists are boomers, and they're more likely to doubt whatever they're told and assume the worst.”