Story of the Day: Axis of Weasels Strikes Again

Salon's Tim Grieve picks up today where so many of us in progressive media have been focusing:

In an August 2004 respective on journalism in the run-up to the Iraq war, Washington Post editor Leonard Downie Jr. was asked to explain how two stories that called into question the case for war wound up buried deep inside his newspaper. His answer, at least in part: The stories relied on anonymous sources.

You might remember Leonard. He's the same WashPo editor who in March 2006 said he was "concerned" about the "more aggressive stance by the government [in cracking down on leaks]." But then pointed out that "the Post had at times honored government requests not to report particularly sensitive information, such as the location of CIA prisons in Eastern Europe."

Holding fast to the facts and journalistic integrity do not appear to be his strong suit.

So what's on the front page of the Washington Post today? A 2,600-word story linking Iran to weapons that are killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq -- a 2,600-word story that is based almost entirely on unnamed sources. We say "almost entirely" because the Post's Joshua Partlow does quote one official by name: Labeed M. Abbawi, an Iraqi deputy foreign minister, who says that it is "difficult" to "accept whatever the American forces say is evidence" because the Americans won't speak openly.

The rest of the story? The part that makes an Iran-Iraq link? Every bit of it comes from unnamed sources, some of whose identities the Post itself doesn't even know. The story starts with the words "senior U.S. officials" and descends deeper into anonymity from there. The Post says that reporters were briefed in Baghdad on the alleged Iran link by "a senior defense official, who was joined by a defense analyst and an explosives expert, both also from the military." The officials spoke "on the condition of anonymity," the Post says, and the analyst's "exact title and full name were not revealed to reporters."

And while Partlow cautions that the unnamed military officials weren't joined by U.S. diplomats or intelligence officials and offered "no evidence" that the "highest levels" of the Iranian government had sanctioned attacks on U.S. troops, the Post's editors still saw fit to put the piece at the top of A1 under the headline, "Military Ties Iran to Arms in Iraq: Explosives Supplied to Shiite Militias, U.S. Officials Say."

And it shouldn't surprise anyone - especially anyone who reads these pages - that The New York Times is right there with WashPo:

The New York Times also put its version of the story on the front page. The headline: "U.S. Says Arms Link Iranians to Iraqi Shiites: Using Serial Numbers as Proof of Origin."

Like the Post's Partlow, the Times' James Glanz dumps some cold water on the military's anonymous presentation. He says that an evidence-free "inference" of involvement by high-level Iranian leaders "and the anonymity of the officials" who made it "seemed likely to generate skepticism among those suspicious that the Bush administration is trying to find a scapegoat for its problems in Iraq, and perhaps even trying to lay the groundwork for war with Iran."

Journalists like Glanz defend such reporting by saying they're merely reporting the facts. But it is an intellectually dishonest account of the situation. Facts are not solely what officials are telling him. And limp allusions to what some critics might believe do not make up for the dearth of questioning.

Facts attained through responsible journalism, especially pertaining to the life and death of war, also call for context, both current and historical. No one in the their right mind can honestly look at the months now of this administration's war-mongering anti-Iran rhetoric (which officially began years ago with the disastrous "Axis of Evil" speech), as well as the more recent highly provocative U.S. military maneuvers, without directing extreme skepticism toward this White House's methods and motivations.

Speaking of skepticism, Grieve ends his article with this:

We'd add, as further cause for skepticism, the fact that the Bush administration was forced to postpone any evidentiary presentation to support the president's State of the Union claims about Iranian involvement in Iraq because, as Stephen Hadley acknowledged, an initial briefing planned by the military "overstated" the case that could be made. Glanz mentions the delay, but then says -- without any attribution whatsoever -- that it stemmed, in part, from "a view among officials in Washington that the original presentation was insufficiently strong."

Glanz also says that "whatever doubts were created about the timing and circumstances of the weapons disclosures, the direct physical evidence presented" by the anonymous military officials Sunday was "extraordinary."

Looking back in 2004 at their own prewar coverage, the Times' editors said that they wished they had been "more aggressive in re-examining the claims" about Iraq's WMD and ties to al-Qaida "as new evidence emerged -- or failed to emerge." With Glanz's having acknowledged room for "skepticism" over the Iran claims, can we expect to see that sort of "aggressive re-examining" before the shooting starts this time around?

Count me among the skeptics.

Iran and Iraq, anonymously, by Tim Grieve
The War Room

Comments

[MediaBloodhound]

Axis of Weasels Strikes Again

[James Z.]

NYT and WashPo act like Pravda of the West and there's no repurcussions. Maybe that's why they do it. Like this government, because they can.

[Davol]

Let's just not let the New York Times or the Washington Post get away with this. We should flood the mailboxes of their editors with outrage over indulging the same type of lies, and the same lying reporters with annonymous sources who are annonymous because they apparently are ashamed of what they are saying. They just keep rubbing crap like this in the face of the American people, and we just keep on taking it.