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Inside U.S.A.: Troubles at the Times: Beyond Blair
Posted on Tuesday, June 10 @ 19:18:20 UTC
Topic: USA
|
 June 10, 2003, www.fair.org
With the resignations of New York Times executive editor Howell Raines and
managing editor Gerald Boyd, the newspaper regarded as the "paper of
record" is going through a severe credibility crisis.
The controversy concerns former Times reporter Jayson Blair, and the
plagiarism and numerous fabricated or inaccurate stories that editors
failed to catch while he was with the paper. While Blair's record was
shameful, it is important to recall that the Times has been guilty of
sloppy or inaccurate reporting involving domestic and international
stories of greater consequence than those Blair covered.
Some examples:
--The Times' Judith Miller has been responsible for some of the paper's
most significant-- and questionable-- reports about Iraq. On April 21,
Miller's front-page exclusive "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi
Scientist Is Said to Assert," told the story of an Iraqi scientist who
apparently "led Americans to a supply of material that proved to be the
building blocks of illegal weapons, which he claimed to have buried as
evidence of Iraq's illicit weapons programs." He also allegedly explained
Iraq's connections to Al Qaeda and its attempts to ship its weapons of
mass destruction to Syria. Miller was not allowed to interview the
supposed scientist who was the key source for the report, and she was
required to clear her copy with the military before publication.
This
story of the valuable, unnamed Iraqi scientist has since vanished.
This was not the first dubious Times report on Iraq's weapons. Before the
war, for example, Miller and Michael Gordon wrote a page-one piece
(9/8/02) about Iraq's attempts to import aluminum tubes, supposedly to
enrich uranium for a nuclear weapons program. The article noted that a
"key issue is whether the items Iraq tried to buy are uniquely designed
for centrifuge use or could have other applications," but quoted no one
who questioned the administration's interpretation. A more balanced look
at the available evidence appeared in the Washington Post two days later:
"Experts familiar with the history of Iraq's weapons program note that
similar tubes are also used in making conventional artillery rockets."
Skeptical scientists, including U.N. weapons inspectors, have since
emphatically rejected the U.S. claims about the tubes. (See Slate,
5/29/03, for a list of other questionable Miller scoops.)
A report from the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz (5/26/03) suggested a
possible reason for Miller's record. Email communication between Miller
and her Times colleague, John Burns, revealed that controversial Iraqi
opposition figure Ahmed Chalabi has, in Miller's words, "provided most of
the front page exclusives on WMD to our paper." Chalabi's credibility has
long been in doubt-- even by some within the U.S. government. Miller's
apparently heavy reliance on him should be of great concern to the Times.
--When anti-war protesters marched in Washington D.C. in October 2002, the
Times reported that the mere "thousands" of demonstrators were "fewer
people... than organizers had said they hoped for." After hundreds of
FAIR activists challenged the paper's count, the Times declined to
acknowledge the error with a correction. Instead, the paper ran a second,
more accurate story, this time noting that the protests "drew 100,000 by
police estimates and 200,000 by organizers', forming a two-mile wall of
marchers around the White House. The turnout startled even organizers, who
had taken out permits for 20,000 marchers."
--When Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was briefly ousted in a coup, the
Times declined to use the word "coup," instead reporting (4/13/02) that
"military officers forced him to resign." In an editorial that day, the
paper declared that Chavez's "resignation" meant that "Venezuelan
democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator." The Times
explained that Chavez "stepped down after the military intervened and
handed power to a respected business leader." Days later, once Chavez had
been restored to power, the Times was contrite over its enthusiasm:
"Forcibly unseating a democratically elected leader, no matter how badly
he has performed, is never something to cheer" (4/16/02). No evidence has
ever emerged that Chavez agreed to resign, even while under the control of
rebellious officers.
--During much of the 1990s, the Times, led by science writer Gina Kolata,
touted the benefits of estrogen replacement therapy for menopausal women
while playing down its risks. For instance, as women's health writer
Barbara Seaman put it in FAIR's magazine Extra! (3-4/97), the Times
"publicized hopeful news from NHS [Harvard Nurses Health Study] about
estrogens and the heart on page one (9/12/91), and frightening news about
estrogens and breast cancer-- from the same source-- on page 18
(11/28/90)." Results from a prominent study documenting the increased
risk of breast cancer, heart attack, blood clots and stroke for women on
estrogen replacement therapy finally occasioned a definitive front-page
Times article in 2002 (7/10/02), following years of studies and reports
that raised questions about the therapy's health benefits.
--The investigation of Wen Ho Lee in 1999 was a major Times project, much
of which was written by investigative reporter Jeff Gerth. Much of the
Times' reporting relied on information leaked by a Congressional committee
headed by Republican Rep. Christopher Cox. In the wake of criticism of
the paper's reporting, the Times re-evaluated its record (9/26/00),
concluding that there were "some things we wish we had done differently."
Given that the vast majority of the espionage-related charges against Lee
were eventually dropped, the Times was left wondering about the fact that
"we occasionally used language that adopted the sense of alarm that was
contained in official reports."
--Gerth also launched the controversy over the Clintons' Whitewater land
deal in a March 8, 1992 report. The article implied that Bill Clinton,
while governor of Arkansas, had replaced a regulator in order to protect
his Whitewater partner, Jim McDougal, from a federal report that found
that his savings and loan, Madison Guaranty, was insolvent. In fact, that
federal report did not find that Madison was insolvent; Clinton did not
name a new regulator until a year later, after the old regulator had
stepped down; and when Madison was declared insolvent, Clinton's nominee
wrote to federal authorities in an effort to get the S&L shut down. This
information, which directly contradicted the central thesis of Gerth's
article, was made available to the reporter in two lengthy memos before he
filed his story.
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