Mea Culpa

The New York Times has finally done it, they've said they're sorry. A number of Op-Ed columnists have begun to express their regret at failing to scrutinize the pre-war intelligence the Bush Administration cited as reason to go to War, and yesterday the New York Times editorial page released this statement:

"...But we 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 been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or 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...

...We consider the story of Iraq's weapons, and of the pattern of misinformation, to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight."

I firmly beleive that a share of the blame for the current "quagmire" in Iraq rests upon the shoulders of our inept media, which failed the American people in the lead up to the Iraq War. Washington correspondents and newspapers alike echoed the White House's daily talking points, rather then analyzing their validity and impact. They willfully allowed the Bush Administration to manage the news in a way that no modern president has. Spoon fed pieces of incomplete intelligence were regarded as fact. Only recently have they awakened from their comatose state, and begun to perform the duties of a legitimate press corp. We entrust in the media a special responsibility, one that should not be taken lightly. Although the days of Walter Cronkite have long since passed, Americans still look to the nightly news to find truth, they still scan their morning papers to find fact, and they still depend on the media to hold our elected officials accountable for their actions. So maybe next time the nation is deciding whether to send our young men and women into war, the media will not "tell with such high zest The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori".