Iraq

Check it Out

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Tim Porter tells us that the media is under using one of the basic tenets of journalism:

� Check it out. And that seems to be the culprit behind many of today’s journalism scandals – as a well the perception by the public that the press is not paying attention. They’re not checking it out enough. Jayson Blair – check him out. George Bush – check him out. Weapons of mass destruction – check them out.

Tim was reminded of this when reading . . . Bring Back the Skeptical Press by Gilbert Cranberg in yesterday’s Washington Post. Cranberg takes the media to task for not checking the facts:

The Bush administration has been taking heavy flak for its as yet unproved claims about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. In fixing blame for the way the public appears to have been sold a bill of goods, don’t overlook the part played by the media. Instead of closely questioning the administration’s case, the nation’s newspaper editorialists basically nodded in agreement.

Read the piece for Cranberg’s analysis of editorial response to Colin Powell’s WMD presentation to the Security Council. Sometimes trying to be current and timely can be a disservice to your constituency:

but the downside of instant analysis is the scant time it leaves for careful reporting and reflection. I learned in my many years of editorial writing to follow I.F. Stone’s prudent advice to read texts and not to rush to judgment. None of these publications evidently realized, or noted, how Powell had embellished some facts, although that is readily apparent from a close reading of his text.
If the first casualty of war is truth, the media will need to be a lot more skeptical and alert to minimize the toll on truth.

I’m not a journalist and haven’t absorbed basic tools of the trade like ‘check it out.’ But I’m learning them and this means that my posts are often taking me longer to write then when I started blogging. I’ve learned that anything that has a fact in the text needs to be verified: sometimes the fact is just right, other times my memory served it up wrong and once in a while I fat finger the keyboard.
Via The Rhetorica Network

Democracy in Iraq?

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From The Daily Kos:

How long will it take until the Shia clerics pick up their weapons and give the order for an uprising?

From the Whisky Bar at closing time:

So how long will it be before the administration and/or its apologists start telling us that “this war was never about democracy in Iraq”?

Got answers?

Jessica Lynch and Spin

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Emma unexpectedly links to this Nicholas Kristoff NYT column (which will be pay to read in a week) and rightly tells us:

What’s amazing is that his story, if true, would be a thousand times better than the original one.

You can go to her place to read why she thinks this. She then goes on to say:

Instead, they played up to the imbecile jingoism of the hard right. Even Kristof seems to be getting tired of it, although he cannot bring himself, yet, to call it lying:

and the paragraph she quotes from Kristol does support this interpretation. I like, though, the way Kristoff put it earlier in his article:

Ms. Lynch is still a hero in my book, and it was unnecessary for officials to try to turn her into a Hollywood caricature. As a citizen, I deeply resent my government trying to spin me like a Ping-Pong ball.

He is still not quite calling it lying but what else can it be?

From Bush to Kerry

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Rand Beers makes a radical jump in allegiances:

Beers’s resignation surprised Washington, but what he did next was even more astounding. Eight weeks after leaving the Bush White House, he volunteered as national security adviser for Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), a Democratic candidate for president, in a campaign to oust his former boss. All of which points to a question: What does this intelligence insider know?

For some answers go here. Via Cursor.org.

Why George Tenet Should Resign

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From the Daily Kos:

Rumsfeld is shifting responsivbility away from his Team B aides at DOD and dumping the mess in Tenet and Kay’s lap. Neither man is particularly respected or liked by Rumsfeld and this political move clearly indicates he’s trying to distance himself and the military from the issue.
If Tenet were smart, he would resign and go after Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush. They clearly expect him to fail, blame him for the failure and then install a puppet who does things their way. This is a naked political move by Rumsfeld and Cheney to cover themselves and place the blame on the CIA, an organization mistrusted by both left and right.

There is more and some juicy tidbits in the comments as well.