Time for The Times
to Fess Up.

Written by Mackenzie Wark
to The New York Times,
July 10, 2007.

To the Editor:
It’s a bit rich for Frank Rich (“When the Vice President Does It, That Means It’s Not Illegal,” July 1, 2007) to write of the "bitter legacy of much of the Washington press's failure to penetrate the hyping of pre-war intelligence" without bothering to mention the culpability of The New York Times itself in this sordid business. What, did you think we would forget Judith Miller? Until the Times apologizes and accounts for its own negligence, its credibility will be no greater than that of
the criminal administration it has aided and abetted.

—McKenzie Wark
—Jackson Heights NY

EDITOR’S NOTE:
Some among our editorial group found Prof. Wark’s critique of Frank Rich, as culpable in the New York Times’ passing on of tainted news, problematic. Frank Rich more than any other Times columnist, they felt, has been a consistent, intelligent and relentless critic of the Bush administration and its war in Iraq. As a theatre critic, Rich was a fascinating choice to be a columnist writing about a reality that is, for the most part, staged.

In terms of the Times apologizing, it should be noted that the paper did publish an editorial in news the news section (“The Times and Iraq” May 26, 2004) which, while it praised the the majority of its war coverage, made an unprecedented admission that the paper had, at times, failed in its duty to provide reliable information. There was no formal apology, but this was the moment when the editorial page began to assume an increasingly critical stance towards the Iraq War and towards the Bush administration in general. “The Times and Iraq” is quoted, in part, below:

“[W]e have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had bee more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — nor failed to emerge.

“The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on “regime change” in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks. (The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles, until his payments were cut off last week.) Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations — in particular, this one.

“Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame on individual reporters. Our examination, however, indicates that the problem was more complicated. Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper. Accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted. Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.”

Missing from this, of course, was any willingness to acknowledge reportorial and/or editorial willingness to participate in erecting the “bodyguard of lies,” the propaganda that Churchill saw as a an essential element in the waging of war.
Rather, the problems referred to in this rare “mea culpa” were portrayed as unconscious instances of institutional sloppiness that, readers were assured, would now come to an end.


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