RESEARCHER
U.S. media performance on Iraq slammed in report
Wed Mar 10 00:03:11 2004
64.140.159.114


09 Mar 2004 22:55
U.S. media performance on Iraq slammed in report
http://www.reuters.com/locales/newsArticle.jsp;:404e6e98:8687f06741d12ae9?type=worldNews&locale=en_IN&storyID=4532464

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Major U.S. newspapers failed to challenge government assertions about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, both before and after the 2003 war, according to a study by the University of Maryland released on Tuesday.

The study, by the university's Center for International and Security Studies, concluded that newspaper coverage generally failed to adequately question the U.S. administration's efforts to link its campaign against Iraq and the "war on terror."

It also concluded that media coverage often echoed the administration's argument that Iraq's chemical and biological weapons were a serious and immediate threat.

"Too many journalists acted as virtual stenographers for the current administration, in effect validating President (George W.) Bush's linkage of terrorism, Iraq and weapons of mass destruction," said University of Maryland journalism professor Susan Moeller, the report's author.

Moeller analyzed reporting by the Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report, and also by National Public Radio.

Moeller said she found coverage before and after the war tended to lump suspected Iraqi nuclear, chemical and biological weapons into a single category. Such reporting, she said, obscured the major differences between the potential harm, availability and ease of use of such weapons.

At the same time, major media provided too little coverage of policy options other than war.

"The 'inverted pyramid' style of news writing, which places the most 'important' information first, produced much greater attention to the administration's point of view on WMD issues at the expense of alternative perspectives," Moeller said.

==============

Tenet attacked over intelligence failures
Independent, UK - 4 hours ago
... Once again Mr Tenet, whom many Republicans would like to make the scapegoat for
the Iraq WMD fiasco, had to walk a fine line, defending the actions of the ...
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=499617

10 March 2004

George Tenet, the CIA director, rejected charges yesterday from senior Democrats that he made no effort to stop the Bush administration making false claims about the threat represented by Saddam Hussein and his alleged weapons of mass destruction.

During a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Mr Tenet told one of his fiercest critics, Senator Edward Kennedy: "I do the intelligence and they [the President and his top officials] take the intelligence, assess the risk and make a policy judgement."

Pointing to the CIA's pre-war view that Saddam did not pose an imminent threat, the Massachusetts senator cited several instances of what he termed war-mongering by Mr Bush, the Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other officials. "What is your responsibility," he asked, "when you hear the President or the Secretary of Defence use such overheated rhetoric?"

With Iraq intelligence set to be an issue in the autumn general election campaign, the questioning of Mr Tenet predictably broke along party lines. Republicans generally heaped praise on him, and Democrats argued that he did not do enough to prevent pre-war intelligence being exaggerated.

They also suggested that the man who theoretically runs the US intelligence establishment had been blindsided by a special Pentagon intelligence gathering unit, feeding much more aggressive assessments directly to Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Once again Mr Tenet, whom many Republicans would like to make the scapegoat for the Iraq WMD fiasco, had to walk a fine line, defending the actions of the White House but insisting that the CIA had behaved honourably.

He was challenged by Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the committee, who listed disparities between the secret October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's weapons capability and the "scarier" assessment in a White Paper published soon afterwards. Mr Levin said that doubts expressed in the NIE had been "buried" in the White Paper and a host of qualifiers had been omitted on specific issues, from Iraq's chemical capabilities to its alleged efforts to buy uranium from Africa, and claims that Saddam would give WMDs to terrorists plotting attacks on the US.

He said: "Why was the scepticism left out of the White Paper? Was it because of pressure from the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans?"

Whatever the reason, the global credibility of the US had "taken a very big hit". There was now less support around the world for the US and for the war on terror, he said.

Mr Bush has appointed a commission to examine pre-war intelligence on Iraq. But it will only report in early 2005, after the election. Democrats will do their utmost to keep the issue in the public eye. Suspicions that the administration misled the public over Iraq have helped dent the President's popularity. Two polls yesterday showed him trailing John Kerry, his probable Democratic opponent in November, by between six and eight points.
===========================

Searched news for IRAQ WMD.

• DETECTIVE COLUMBO ASKS: WAS 911 AN INSIDE JOB? — Douglas Herman, Wed Mar 10 00:22