Untitled Document
Following FAIR's call for more mainstream coverage of the "smoking gun memo"—the
secret British document containing new evidence that the Bush administration manipulated
intelligence to justify its plan to invade Iraq—a steady trickle of news
reports have appeared. But that coverage has been downplayed in general and is
still completely absent from the nightly news.
The Los Angeles Times published a page 3 story on the memo on May 12, and the
Washington Post ran a page 18 story the following day. More than two weeks after
the story broke in the Sunday Times of London (5/1/05), it finally made the
front page of a major U.S. newspaper, the Chicago Tribune (5/17/05).
After referring to the memo (5/2/05) in a story on the British electoral campaign,
the New York Times failed to report on the document's implications about the
Bush administration until today (5/20/05); the one-column story didn't mention
the manipulation of intelligence until the eighth paragraph. (Times columnist
Paul Krugman also discussed the memo on the paper's opinion page on May 16.)
The Washington Post's ombudsman, Michael Getler, who the previous week (5/8/05)
had mentioned reader complaints about the Post's lack of memo coverage without
evaluating their substance, revisited the issue with a much more critical eye
in his most recent column (5/15/05). (The ombud gave back-handed credit to FAIR
and the group Media Matters for America—both "self-described media
watchdog organizations"—for prompting him to delve into the story.)
Getler wrote that Post editors initially told him they didn't pursue the story
because they were "tied up with election coverage"—this despite
the fact that the leaked memo became a major election story in Britain and likely
contributed to Tony Blair's weak returns. When he questioned them again after
the email campaign, Getler wrote, "editors agreed that this story should
be covered and said they were going to go back and do that"; the Post's
May 13 story followed.
Getler called investigation of the memo's conclusions "journalistically
mandatory" and suggested that the Post story should have been placed on
the front page.
While the memo has begun to get wider coverage in print, broadcasters have
maintained a near silence on the issue. The story has turned up in a few short
CNN segments (Crossfire, 5/13/05; Live Sunday, 5/15/05; Wolf Blitzer Reports,
5/16/05), but the only mention of the memo FAIR found on the major broadcast
networks came on ABC's Sunday morning show This Week (5/15/05), in which host
George Stephanopoulos questioned Sen. John McCain about its contents. When McCain
declared that he didn't "agree with it" and defended the Bush administration's
decision to go to war, Stephanopoulos didn't question him further. A look at
the nightly news reveals not a single story aired about the memo and its implications.
When finally questioned by CNN (5/16/05), White House press secretary Scott
McClellan claimed he hadn't seen the memo, but that "the reports"
about it were "flat-out wrong." British government officials, however,
did not dispute the contents of the memo—which can be read in full online
at http://downingstreetmemo.com/ —and a former senior American official
called it "an absolutely accurate description of what transpired"
(Knight Ridder, 5/6/05).
The Chicago Tribune (5/17/05) named several factors that had caused a "less
than robust discussion" of the British memo: Aside from the White House's
denials, and the media's slow reaction, the paper asserted that "the public
generally seems indifferent to the issue or unwilling to rehash the bitter prewar
debate over the reasons for the war." Of course, it's hard to judge the
public's interest in a story the media have largely shielded them from.
ACTION:
Please contact the nightly news programs and ask them to investigate and report
on the new evidence that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to
support its plan to invade Iraq.
CONTACT:
ABC World News Tonight
Phone: 212-456-4040
PeterJennings@abcnews.com
CBS Evening News
Phone: 212-975-3691
evening@cbsnews.com
NBC Nightly News
Phone: 212-664-4971
nightly@nbc.com
PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
Phone: 703-739-5000
newshour@pbs.org
As always, please remember that your comments have more impact if you maintain
a polite tone.
see Blair
hit by new leak of secret war plan on Looking Glass News for a copy of one
original story of the memo, which has been ignored by the US media.