Background:
Amanpour On Iraq: Where were the journalists?
Phil Donahue on His 2003 Firing from MSNBC, When Liberal Network Couldn’t Tolerate Antiwar Voices
So Wrong for So Long: Greg Mitchell on How the Press, the Pundits — and the President — Failed on Iraq...
As the Iraq war passes its fifth anniversary, we take a look at the corporate media’s coverage of five years of war with Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher. He has just written a new book chronicling the media’s failing on covering Iraq titled, So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits—and the President—Failed on Iraq.
Transcript
GREG MITCHELL: Thank you. Happy to be here.AMY GOODMAN: We’re moving into the sixth year of this war. What’s so interesting about your book is that you start from the beginning, and it’s almost like a diary, a journal, of how the foundation was built, the justifications were built, for war.
GREG MITCHELL: Right. Well, it’s really the first five-year history that anyone’s written, I think, and it goes from the run-up to the surge debate last fall. So it really is a chronology. It’s not in calendar form, of course, but it really does cover the whole period, so you do get all the arguments and the debate and the failures before the invasion was launched and then the five years of deceit and shortcomings ever since.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the pre-invasion period and what you felt was most — how the media was most successful in laying the false foundation.
GREG MITCHELL: Right,
right. Well, as you said, it really was the mainstream media that,
starting early on, relayed the false information that came from the
administration — as we know, the New York Times and the Washington Post,
among the worst in that — and it not only was putting forth the false
information, but also the placement of it, putting it on the front page.
So it wasn’t just a matter of carrying the information. So it had
tremendous impact on everyone, including Democrats in Congress, who were
afraid to speak out.
AMY GOODMAN: Were you getting response at the time? I mean, you were writing about this at Editor & Publisher and online.
GREG MITCHELL: Right,
right. Well, I mean, that’s the thing. We were among the few who were
really deeply questioning in the mainstream what was being put out. So
it was not a secret to us, people have said, about the Knight Ridder
Washington office and others who were covering this, within the
mainstream. So there were people who were covering the actual facts and
raising the questions about the need for war, about the WMD, about the links to al-Qaeda, and so forth. So it was not information that was really impossible to get.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk
about the “Iraq Follies,” and you’ve summarized this in a recent piece
you did, the eighteen things we’ve already forgotten about the media’s
flawed coverage of Iraq.
GREG MITCHELL: Right.
Well, it’s really going back to the run-up and past the run-up, all the
various commentators, like Chris Matthews or Bill O’Reilly or David
Brooks and Tom Friedman —- people like to poke fun at Tom Friedman for
the so-called “Friedman Unit,” where he continually every six months
would say, “Let’s give the war another six months,” and that went on for
four years. But that was actually -—
AMY GOODMAN: Thomas Friedman of the New York Times
GREG MITCHELL: Yeah, Thomas Friedman, yeah. But that was actually sort of a majority position. If you go back — I had to write at Editor & Publisher
— and it’s all collected in the book — about every three months, I
would write a column saying, “When is the first major newspaper going to
come out for a — to reverse course and to begin a pullout?” And every
three months, I would write this, and it never happened and never
happened, until last year. So the Thomas Friedman situation really was
the mainstream view.
AMY GOODMAN: You
have, number one, the day before the invasion, Bill O’Reilly said, “If
the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it’s clean, he has
nothing, I will apologize to the nation; I will not trust the Bush
administration again, all right?”
GREG MITCHELL: Right.
Well, that didn’t quite happen. He did have a brief period when there
were all those polls came out that showed that the Iraqis, the majority
of Iraqis, were in favor of shooting at Americans, and that kind of
threw him off his game for about a week, and he said, “Well, if they
don’t want us there, let’s get out.” But then he — you know, he kind of
settled down.
AMY GOODMAN: After the fall of Baghdad, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews declares, “We’re all neocons now.”
GREG MITCHELL: Well,
he’s — you know, I think Chris likes to think of himself as being
antiwar now, but he was a cheerleader as much as anyone back then, and
that might surprise a few people.
AMY GOODMAN: But there was someone else at MSNBC: Phil Donahue.
GREG MITCHELL: Right.
Well, yeah, Phil was really their star before the war. And he actually
took the radical position of occasionally having antiwar people on,
maybe even yourself, occasionally. And because of that, he was accused
of being insufficiently patriotic, and so he was, shortly thereafter,
was let go at the network, even though his ratings were higher than
anyone else.
AMY GOODMAN: Right before the invasion, he’s fired and that secret NBC memo comes out —-
GREG MITCHELL: Right, right.
AMY GOODMAN: —- that says we can’t have our flagship show having these antiwar voices —-
GREG MITCHELL: That’s right.
AMY GOODMAN: —-
when other networks are waving the American flag. Then you have, the
same day as the fall of Baghdad, Joe Scarborough, also on MSNBC,
saying, “I’m waiting to hear the words ‘I was wrong’ from some of the
world’s most elite journalists, politicians, and Hollywood types."
GREG MITCHELL: Right.
Well, I mean, Joe is someone else, again, today, who thinks of himself
as being critical of the war and how it was conducted and so forth, but
it really is — I think one of the values of the book is that it really
does allow you to go back and relive these — it may not be a happy
experience, but it really lets you relive the experience as it happened.
You know, it’s not just a looking back, and I’m looking back today and
saying, you know, it was really screwed up, and here’s how people messed
up. It really is chronicles as it happened. So you get a much better
sense of how — what was being said at the time and the failures at the
time.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Greg Mitchell. He is editor of Editor & Publisher and has just published the book So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits — and the President — Failed on Iraq.
We’ll come back and talk about that White House Correspondents Dinner
with Stephen Colbert and his significance in all of this in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest, Greg Mitchell, he’s editor of Editor & Publisher. Explain what Editor & Publisher is.
GREG MITCHELL: It’s
one of the oldest magazines in the country. It’s the journal of the
newspaper industry. It goes back 125 years ago. So it’s a longstanding
venerable publication and, of course, now a very active website.
AMY GOODMAN: His book is called So Wrong for So Long. Now, the White House Correspondents Dinner each year, you talk about one of them right at the time of the invasion.
GREG MITCHELL: Right.
Well, it was actually a similar dinner, Radio and TV Correspondents,
same idea. But, you know, the usual thing is for the — they poke fun at
the President, and sometimes the President shows up and pokes fun at
himself. And this was, you know, three or four years ago, and it was
really one of the — I would call it one of the worst, disgraceful
moments in the history of the presidency, where President Bush appeared
and showed a video, or actually a slide show, of him sort of looking
around the White House and looking under desks and looking under chairs,
and he kept saying, “Where are those missing WMDs? I can’t find those
missing WMDs. Are they over here? Or are they over there?” And the media
laughed like crazy about it. They thought it was one of the funniest
things they’d seen. And even afterwards, there was very few — very
little criticism. David Corn was one who did raise some criticism, but
there was very little criticism from the media. And I don’t know which
was more disgraceful, the President’s actions or the media’s lack of
response.
AMY GOODMAN: Well,
let’s go to Stephen Colbert. This was later. This was April 2006. Of
course, Colbert, host of Comedy Central’s fake news program, The Colbert Report,
mocking the press for its failings in a blistering routine at the White
House Correspondents Association Dinner in May of 2006. He was the
featured speaker of the night. He addressed a packed crowd that very
significantly included President Bush, also a number of cabinet members,
most of the country’s most recognizable TV anchors and correspondents.
This is some of what Stephen Colbert had to say.
- STEPHEN COLBERT: And
as excited as I am to be here with the President, I am appalled to be
surrounded by the liberal media that is destroying America, with the
exception of Fox News. Fox News gives you both sides of every story: the
President’s side, and the Vice President’s side.
But the rest of you, what are you thinking? Reporting on NSA wiretapping or secret prisons in Eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason: they’re super-depressing. And if that’s your goal, well, misery accomplished.
Over the last five years you people were so good, over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn’t want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew.
But, listen, let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works. The President makes decisions. He’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ’em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration? You know, fiction!
AMY GOODMAN: Stephen
Colbert, speaking at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner,
May 2006. His performance was one of the most talked-about topics on
the internet the next day. But the corporate media? Ignored him.
According to the media watch group Media Matters, subsequent press
coverage focused only on President Bush’s short speech, while omitting
mention of Stephen Colbert. All three major TV networks played clips of
Bush’s routine on their morning shows but ignored Colbert entirely.
CNN’s American Morning did the same. New York Times’s initial coverage of the night omitted any reference to Colbert. Greg Mitchell?
GREG MITCHELL: Well, I’m proud to say that Editor & Publisher
was the first to cover it widely, and it was our internet report that
was picked up by most of the internet to get the ball rolling. So —-
AMY GOODMAN: And we broadcast the whole thing.
GREG MITCHELL: Right. So it -— but it was —-
AMY GOODMAN: What about that?
GREG MITCHELL: Well,
I mean, it was obvious that the media -— if he had just poked fun at
the President, he might have gotten away with it. But the fact that he
was just as critical of the media is — the clip you just showed is
actually included in my book. They kind of kicked back. I remember Dana
Milbank and other people appearing on TV and saying, “Oh, it wasn’t that
funny,” or, you know, and so forth. But really, they were kind of
reeling. They’re not used to getting that kind of mockery to their
faces.
AMY GOODMAN: And what about right through to this day? I mean, the fifth anniversary did get coverage on all of the major networks.
GREG MITCHELL: Right.
Well, the problem was, asking viewers and listeners to just think, did
you see any media self-assessment in all the finger-pointing that went
on and all the analysis and all the review of the war and what went
right and what went wrong and who did a good job and who didn’t? Did you
see much or any of the media reviewing its own performance? I thought
it was shocking. I saw hardly anything in any of the newspapers or in
the mainstream looking at their own performance. And obviously, from the
fact I’ve written this book, I think there’s much reason for criticism.
And the fact there was, again, no self-assessment is revealing, the
fact that they — maybe it’s guilt or it’s shame or whatever it is, but
certainly badly needed.
AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, it’s not just about history; it’s about the future. It’s, for example, about bombing Iran.
GREG MITCHELL: Well,
and, you know, again, I hope the book lays out lessons to report. I
think, in general, to speak broadly, I think there are more — there has
been in the past few years more mainstream reporters who are a little
quicker to be suspicious of the administration line. And, you know,
again, I hope that continues, but, you know, there was a story in the New York Times
today about, where is the media in the war? Where did everybody go? Why
are there so few reporters left in Iraq? You know, so that’s another
important factor.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back in time to this excerpt of the documentary War Made Easy
that features the mediate critic Norman Solomon. It relates to the
media’s response to former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech at
the United Nations, making the case for weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq.
- COLIN POWELL: Saddam
Hussein’s intentions have never changed. He is not developing the
missiles for self-defense. These are missiles that Iraq wants in order
to project power, to threaten and to deliver chemical, biological and,
if we let him, nuclear warheads.
AARON BROWN: Today, Secretary of State Powell brought the United Nations Security Council, the administration’s best evidence so far.
NORMAN SOLOMON: After Colin Powell’s speech to the UN, immediately the US press applauded with great enthusiasm.
AARON BROWN: Did Colin Powell close the deal today, in your mind, for anyone who has yet objectively to make up their mind?
HENRY KISSINGER: I think for anybody who analyzes the situation, he has closed the deal.
SEAN HANNITY: This irrefutable, undeniable, incontrovertible evidence today, Colin Powell brilliantly delivered that smoking gun today. Colin Powell was outstanding today. I mean, it was lockstep — it was so compelling, I don’t see how anybody, at this point, cannot support this effort.
ALAN COLMES: He made a wonderful presentation. I thought he made a great case for the purpose of disarmament.
MORT KONDRACKE: It was devastating, I mean, and overwhelming. Overwhelming abundance of the evidence. Point after point after point with — he just flooded the terrain with data.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: It’s the end of the argument phase. America has made its case.
FOX NEWS: The Powell speech has moved the ball.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: I think the case is closed.
AMY GOODMAN: Yes, an excerpt of War Made Easy,
produced by the Media Education Foundation. Greg Mitchell, the
significance of that moment? February 5, 2003 is, what, just over a
month before the invasion.
GREG MITCHELL: Right.
Well, actually, that clip is a little misleading, in that all the
people in it — you had Henry Kissinger speaking, and you had Fox News
people. That wasn’t really the problem. The problem was that the Washington Post and the New York Times
and all the other real moderate, or some say liberal, publications all
bought into it. So, I mean, Fox News wouldn’t particularly bother me.
AMY GOODMAN: And you had Aaron Brown there. It’s from CNN.
GREG MITCHELL: Yeah, but he was interviewing Kissinger. So, I mean, the real problem was the real influence of the people in the middle. The Washington Post, the New York Times and those people just bought into it, just as much as you saw on Fox News.
AMY GOODMAN: And the people who aren’t interviewed — I mean, you begin your book — one of the people you start with is Daniel Ellsberg.
GREG MITCHELL: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: But
there were so many. This wasn’t just a tiny quiet minority. I mean, if
you think of February 15, the massive protests in the streets —
GREG MITCHELL: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: — millions rocked the world in protest. Where were those people in these corporate network studios?
GREG MITCHELL: It’s
— again, it’s incredible. You look at the numbers, they just weren’t
there, you know. I mean, we interviewed Daniel Ellsberg, and we
interviewed Norman Solomon, and we interviewed Arianna Huffington and
people like that. They were certainly available. And it really is
shocking if you look back. I mean, you know, Wesley Clark was sort of
the — I don’t know what. He was seen as the person who gave more of a
balanced talk, but that was about it.
Related Blog Posts:
Arundhati Roy on Iraq War’s 10th: Bush May Be Gone, But "Psychosis" of U.S. Foreign Policy Prevails http://www.culturesocietyblog.com/2013/03/arundhati-roy-on-iraq-wars-10th-bush.html
Breaking: Iraq Spies Lies Exposed! & Tony Blair Ignores His Own Spy Agencies! http://www.culturesocietyblog.com/2013/03/breaking-iraq-spies-lies-exposed-tony.html
Bush's Legacy: Massacres, War Crimes, Neo-Nazi's, Murder & Terrorismhttp://www.culturesocietyblog.com/2013/03/bushs-legacy-massacres-war-crimes-neo.html
BBC-Guardian Exposé Uses WikiLeaks to Link Iraq Torture Centers to U.S. Col. Steele & Gen. Petraeus http://www.culturesocietyblog.com/2013/03/bbc-guardian-expose-uses-wikileaks-to.html
Bush's Legacy: New Iraq Oil Law To Open Iraq’s Oil Reserves to Western Companieshttp://www.culturesocietyblog.com/2013/03/bushs-legacy-new-iraq-oil-law-to-open.html
Bush's Legacy: Fired Army Whistleblower Receives $970K for Exposing Halliburton No-Bid Contracts in Iraq http://www.culturesocietyblog.com/2013/03/bushs-legacy-fired-army-whistleblower.html
Bush's Legacy: Dahr Jamail Returns to Iraq to Find Rampant Torture and a Failed State Living in "Utter Devastation" http://www.culturesocietyblog.com/2013/03/bushs-legacy-dahr-jamail-returns-to.html
Bush's Legacy: Ten Years Later, U.S. Has Left Iraq With Mass Displacement & Epidemic of Birth Defects, Cancers http://www.culturesocietyblog.com/2013/03/bushs-legacy-en-years-later-us-has-left.html
The Halliburton Agenda: The Politics of Oil and Money http://www.culturesocietyblog.com/2013/03/the-halliburton-agenda-politics-of-oil.html
The Iraq Effect (2007): New Study Finds 600% Rise in Terrorism Since US Invasion of Iraq http://www.culturesocietyblog.com/2013/03/the-iraq-effect-2007-new-study-finds.html
Democracy Now! Iraq War Timeline Recaps a Decade of Independent Reporting on Occupation and Protest http://www.culturesocietyblog.com/2013/03/democracy-now-iraq-war-timeline-recaps.html
Analogy: This is what politics in the States has become like (meaningless cheering for whatever their leaders support)...
People cheer for the side they are on, no real debate(right wing): Indecision 1776 - Ye Cobblestone Road to the White House - Rick Perry & Crowd Response
People cheer for the side they are on, no real debate(left wing):
... at 2 minute and 40 seconds the crowd cheers when Stewart says 'raining hellfire from the skies with drones'. (Innocent people - including women and children - were being killed i.e. The Death Planes or The Drone Wars)
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