Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Danny Okrent Goes Apeshit Edition): Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal

June 01, 2004

Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Danny Okrent Goes Apeshit Edition)

New York Times boss Bill Keller says:

Delicate Monster: It's a little galling to watch her [Judith Miller] pursued by some of these armchair media ethicists who have never ventured into a war zone or earned the right to carry Judy's laptop.

Danny Okrent, New York Times not-the-ombudsman, begins with a concessive opening paragraph bowing to the Local Gods:

The New York Times > Week in Review > The Public Editor: Weapons of Mass Destruction? Or Mass Distraction?: To anyone who read the paper between September 2002 and June 2003, the impression that Saddam Hussein possessed, or was acquiring, a frightening arsenal of W.M.D. seemed unmistakable. Except, of course, it appears to have been mistaken.... The results of The Times's own examination.... I think they got it right. Mostly. (I do question the placement: as one reader asked, "Will your column this Sunday address why the NYT buried its editors' note - full of apologies for burying stories on A10 - on A10?")....

And Okrent then goes apeshit. I count eight severe criticisms of "Judy" in Okrent's piece, any one of which would get somebody fired from a healthy institution. And it is also Okrent's judgment that it is not an individual but an "institutional" problem: something much more serious than a couple of off-the-reservation reporters who don't understand that they are there not to please their sources but to report the news:

The New York Times > Week in Review > The Public Editor: Weapons of Mass Destruction? Or Mass Distraction?: coverage ... credulous... inappropriately... lavish front-page display... heavy-breathing headlines... fine articles... that... challenged... the faulty stories... played as quietly as a lullaby... interred on Page B10... flawed journalism... flimsiness of "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert," by Judith Miller (April 21, 2003)... its prominent front-page display... Miller... an ongoing minuet of startling assertion followed by understated contradiction.... pinning this on Miller alone... inaccurate... editors placed the headline "U.S. Experts Find Radioactive Material in Iraq"....

One old Times hand... not-too-distant past ... editors... "Don't get it first, get it right."... mutated into "Get it first and get it right." The next devolution was an obvious one.... breathless stories... unsubstantiated "revelations"... anonymity-cloaked assertions... vested interests. Times reporters broke many stories... stories themselves later broke apart... Times readers never found out.... Pentagon assertions ... you could almost sense epaulets sprouting on the shoulders of editors....

Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri... "most valuable information"... chemical and biological laboratories...("Defectors Bolster U.S. Case Against Iraq, Officials Say," by Judith Miller, Jan. 24, 2003)... events should have compelled the paper to re-examine those assertions, and hold the officials publicly responsible if they did not pan out.... anonymous officials expressed fears that Haideri's relatives in Iraq "were executed as a message to potential defectors." Were they? Did anyone go back to ask? Did anything Haideri say have genuine value? Stories, like plants, die if they are not tended. So do the reputations of newspapers....

CODDLING SOURCES.... That automatic editor defense, "We're not confirming what he says, we're just reporting it," may apply to the statements of people speaking on the record. For anonymous sources, it's worse than no defense. It's a license granted to liars. The contract between a reporter and an unnamed source - the offer of information in return for anonymity - is properly a binding one. But I believe that a source who turns out to have lied has breached that contract, and can fairly be exposed. The victims of the lie are the paper's readers, and the contract with them supersedes all others. (See Chalabi, Ahmad, et al.) Beyond that, when the cultivation of a source leads to what amounts to a free pass for the source, truth takes the fall. A reporter who protects a source not just from exposure but from unfriendly reporting by colleagues is severely compromised....

Raines... denies that The Times's standard procedures were cast aside.... But my own reporting... has convinced me that a dysfunctional system... reporters who raised substantive questions about certain stories were not heeded.... some with substantial knowledge... seem not to have been given the chance to express reservations.... Readers have asked why The Times waited so long to address the issues... Keller and his key associates may have been reluctant to open new wounds.... The editors' note to readers will have served its apparent function only if it launches a new round of examination and investigation. I don't mean further acts of contrition or garment-rending, but a series of aggressively reported stories detailing the misinformation, disinformation and suspect analysis that led virtually the entire world to believe Hussein had W.M.D. at his disposal....

...a drama in which The Times played a role.... David E. Sanger ("A Seat of Honor Lost to Open Political Warfare") elegantly characterized Chalabi as "a man who, in lunches with politicians, secret sessions with intelligence chiefs and frequent conversations with reporters"... The words "from The Times, among other publications" would have fit nicely after "reporters".... aggressive journalism that I long for... paper owes... its readers... self-respect, would reveal... how The Times itself was used to further their cunning campaign.

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Comments

A lot of reputations have met a bitter end in the sand and dust of 'ground truth' in Iraq. Frankly I'm glad it's all coming out. The truth is that these same people have been around for years peddling this trash - ideologues, sloppy reporters, politicians - and now they're having to confront reality. Reality that had nothing to do with their pretentious twitter.

Posted by: Oldman on June 1, 2004 11:59 PM

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She must be on the CIA payroll to be this far into the bullshit and noone to call her on it.

Posted by: non economist on June 2, 2004 01:19 AM

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From what I gather the explanation is quite a bit simpler: she gets invited to great parties and is a person "to know" and therefore editors love her cachet. The best explanation I've heard so far as to how Judith Miller got it so wrong (in addition to being inclined to get it wrong because her world view was predisposed to finding wmds) is that she is the quintessential "source" reporter -- that is, a "he said she said" kind of reporter, which works okay when reporting essentially political stories, but not with any other kind of story. That kind of reporting requires one to hold up sources against the "light of day" -- to quirey academics, scientists, etc., who might have been able to tell her why someone's "facts" were just very unlikely to be true based on their own technical and specialized knowledge. That, apparently, is not the kind of thing she liked to do.

Posted by: Barbara on June 2, 2004 06:17 AM

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Barbara writes:

The best explanation I've heard so far as to how Judith Miller got it so wrong (in addition to being inclined to get it wrong because her world view was predisposed to finding wmds) is that she is the quintessential "source" reporter

which seems reasonable. Barbara, would you care to source you explanation? Some here would like more details.

Posted by: Jonathan Goldberg on June 2, 2004 06:39 AM

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What role does technical knowledge or lack thereof have to do with reporters getting it wrong? Weren't the people that "got it right" on the WMD the real experts like Hans Blix and Scott Ritter? It takes a certain amount of technical knowledge to understand whether or not some claims are valid.

Assuming that "sources" no matter how close to the top have it correct is not a good assumption. I believe Brad was burned believing that this administration would not make a WMD claim if there were no WMD. A reporter not only needs technical knowledge or access to that knowledge, but needs to evaluate whether or not the sources are basing claims on technical knowledge. Reagan got it wrong with the "missile gap", Star Wars, etc. Clinton got it wrong with the drug factory in Sudan and the Chinese embassy in Serbia. How can someone unfamiliar with the technology evaluate claims about missile defense?

The problem is not confined to science. Reporters that know nothing about budgeting and economics, may blithely report administration rhetoric about deficits or job creation. It requires experts like Brad to identify the bogus numbers. How much bad economic reporting have we read by reporters that a) don't know the subject themselves and b) don't know enough to determine who is expert and who is not?

American politics has a very strong anti-intellectual streak. That streak has infested the GOP at its very core. Thus we see the GOP positions on missile defense deployment (technically not feasible) stem cell research, supply side economics, teaching creationism in schools, etc. that are based on anti-intellectual ideology and not facts and knowledge. The left has similar blind spots and will ignore science and technical knowledge that does not fit its ideological agenda (anti-free trade, pesticides, biotech, etc.)

As a modern nation, we depend on our technology. However, there is an underlying ideology that works against an informed and knowledgeable public. Reporters who know how to write but have little technical knowledge are ill suited to informing the public.

Posted by: bakho on June 2, 2004 06:40 AM

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Be sure to see Sam Coppersmith's excellent column "You Don't Work the Ref When a Bad Call Goes Your Way":

"...conservatives have had it in for The Times for years. But when the newspaper gets Iraqi WMD wrong, and admits that its reporters and editors let its readers down, people who have built entire careers screaming about bias and error have absolutely nothing to say. To these critics, any mistakes The Times made in running dozen of stories helpful to the Bush administration’s desire to topple Saddam Hussein weren’t evidence of bias or institutional error. Conservatives can easily forgive mistakes -- when they’re useful mistakes."

http://liberaldesert.blogspot.com/

Posted by: Kosh on June 2, 2004 07:52 AM

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This mini-drama illustrates the quintessential dliemma of current media reporting: trying to get there first with the biggest and the bestest.

Ne'ermind that it's all wrong.

Posted by: i ain't telling on June 2, 2004 07:54 AM

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Barbara writes:

The reason Miller got it so wrong is the same reason the neocons got it so wrong—exactly the same reason. Miller had extensive, long-standing ties—social and business, as well as ideological—to the people who were running Chalabi and running us into war. (For as long as a year she was listed, for instance, on the roster of "experts" promoted by Daniel Pipes' Middle Eastern Forum—wayback link is at http://web.archive.org/web/20030402054549/http://www.meforum.org/experts.php.) Miller was part of an influence network; she was using the news columns of the Times to advance the agenda and the bureaucratic interests of that network. (Her reporting consistently slighted or ignored the CIA/DIA critics of the neocon players.) And, as both Danny Okrent (thought as obscurely as possible) and Franklin Foer (in his piece in New York Magazine, once you get past the dish) indicate, the editors of the Times worked to enable Miller by subverting the paper's internal structures of self-critique and self-correction. As Brad says, it's not a question of a reporter or two being overzealous about coddling their sources—nor is it simply a cultural problem. The Times deliberately skewed its coverage of the WMD story toward a favored group and a favored policy agenda, and it's remarkable how close we are to seeing that conclusion rigorously documented. Posted extensively about this at Reading A1, the NY Times front page project: http://blogs.salon.com/0003364/2004/05/30.html

Posted by: Michael on June 2, 2004 08:37 AM

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Let me agree with Michael for once. I have a lot of Miller links up at my URL. (It even includes sex rumors and a family Mafia connection!) Miller was part of the neo-con team. Expertise or lack of it has nothing to do with it.

If you saw this link on Calpundit/Washington Monthly, there's a lot of new stuff.

Posted by: Zizka on June 2, 2004 08:58 AM

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Woops! Here it is:

http://seetheforest.blogspot.com/2004_06_01_seetheforest_archive.html#108613717589542689

Judith Miller links

Posted by: Zizka on June 2, 2004 09:01 AM

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So can we now officially say the L.A. Times is the best U.S. newspaper? Better investigative reporting, more courageous truth-telling in daily news articles, and editorials that tell it like it is.

Posted by: CalDem on June 2, 2004 10:06 AM

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What I don't get--although of course I get it--in Okrent's piece is that argument that what is wrong with judith miller style reporting is that it fits with the paper's desire to "get it first" rather than get it right. The times could have been equally "first" to be sceptical about the war--there were, and are, lots of sy hersh like scoops out there to be covered on page one which would have challenged the neo-con war fantasies. The fact of the matter is they let miller have the run of the front page because the times didn't want to run stories that cast doubt on the war because it didn't have the guts to follow the obvious clues that the war cause was as fake as its supporters were corrupt. Judy miller (who to my eternal rage spoke at my grandfather's funeral citing him for saying "keep an open mind, but not so open anyone can walk through it") was allowed to do her thing because it wasn't politically safe to challenge the bush admin on their lies. Her story wasn't "risky" reporting, it wasn't merely "First" it was out and out lies in the service of a corrupt administration. The times abdicated *our* right to know at the same time that they abdicated their duty to police their front page and their reporters.

Kate Gilbert

Posted by: Kate Gilbert on June 2, 2004 10:16 AM

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I wonder how Judy likes her new one?

Posted by: vachon on June 2, 2004 10:23 AM

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bakho: "American politics has a very strong anti-intellectual streak. That streak has infested the GOP at its very core."

I'd go further to say that American society in general has a strong anti-intellectual streak. After all, we glorify jocks over the geeks, and not just in high school.

Posted by: fling93 on June 2, 2004 12:42 PM

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Allow me to point out that anti-thinking in the US has a long history, as PT Barnum noted when he said that no one has ever gone broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American public. It's still true ;(.

Posted by: Eli Rabett on June 2, 2004 01:12 PM

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Robert Parry claims it is a rightward bias of the mainstream press:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/060204.html

"But Okrent’s critique on May 30 and the editors' correction on May 26 ignore the elephant sitting in the middle of the American journalistic living room: For a variety of reasons – including fear – major U.S. news outlets have given a conservative slant to the news, systematically, for much of the past quarter century. Mainstream journalists simply are afraid to go against how conservatives want the news presented. Otherwise, they risk getting denounced as "liberal" or even "anti-American" and seeing their careers suffer."

Posted by: bakho on June 2, 2004 03:04 PM

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The main problem is that today's news media is not interested in the truth. They sell the same amount of ads regardless. They are interested in two things: a) Filling space, and b) not getting sued. In pursuit of those two things they turn to people like Judith Miller, who view their job as stenographer of other people's words, not seekers of truth.

I have called up an editor for a small city daily on the phone and asked him why he was printing up such a pack of lies from opponents of a parks project that I was trying to get off the ground, and he said "I don't care whether what they say is true or not, I'm just reporting what they said." If he called them liars, he could get sued, and it doesn't matter to him anyhow as long as it sells newspapers. When editors view their job as faithful transcription of whatever lies are put forward regarding an issue, rather than as seekers of the truth, the result is inevitable -- the news media turns into a tool of the most vile liars out there, who turn the media into their own personal echo chamber of distortions.

- Badtux the Oft-interviewed Penguin

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