As Newsweek is Pressured Over Koran Report, Who Should Be Held Accountable For The Media's Mistakes Ahead of the Iraq Invasion?

by AMY GOODMAN

Last week the White House charged that "people lost their lives" because of an inaccurate Newsweek report on the desecration of the Koran at Guantanamo. Media analysts Norman Solomon and Michael Massing discuss government pressure on journalists and the media's coverage in the lead up to the Iraq war.

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After the story broke, the White House and Pentagon have painted Isikoff and Newsweek as being responsible for deaths during rioting in Afghanistan following the article"s publication. Pentagon spokesperson Larry Dirita said "People are dead because of what this son of a ___ said. How could he be credible now?"

Even after Newsweek retracted its story, the White House continued its offensive. This is White House spokesperson Scott McClellan last week.

• Scott McClellan, White House press secretary speaking at a press briefing on May 17, 2005.

White House spokesperson Scott McClellan at a news conference last week. Since then, media outlets and human rights groups have revealed scores of allegations of abuse of the Koran by US interrogators and others. McClellan has now retreated on claims that Newsweek"s retracted story cost lives in Afghanistan. This is from a White House news confernce on Monday.

• Scott McClellan, White House press secretary speaking at a press briefing on May 17, 2005.

We are joined now by Michael Massing, a contributing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review and board member of the Committee to Protect Journalists. He is author of "Now They Tell Us: The American Press and Iraq." And on the line from California, Norman Soloman joins us - he is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and author of the forthcoming book "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death."

• Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is author of the forthcoming book "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death" which will be out in June.

• Michael Massing, a contributing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review and board member of the Committee to Protect Journalists. He is the author of "Now They Tell Us: The American Press and Iraq." He frequently writes for the New York Review of Books, the American Prospect and the Nation.

AMY GOODMAN: As we talk about the Newsweek controversy and the allegations of Koran abuse, the pressure from the U.S. government after Michael Isikoff's piece appeared. We're joined by Michael Massing, contributing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, board member of the Committee to Protect Journalists, author of Now They Tell Us: The American Press in Iraq. And on the line from California, Norman Solomon, who is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, author of the forthcoming book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. Well, Michael Massing, let’s begin with you. Were you surprised as the Newsweek controversy started to unfold, the allegations of Koran desecration and then what came next from the Pentagon, from the White House?

MICHAEL MASSING: Well, no. It's part of a pattern that we have been seeing. You know, the press right now, I think, a lot of journalists would feel they're under attack in ways that are unprecedented, and it's not just that you have, say, a president or a presidential press spokesman criticizing the press -- you go back to President Kennedy and find that -- but there's this echo chamber out there now that has really led to such a sort of forceful coming down on the media from a variety of places, so the White House is amplified by Fox News, by the Weekly Standard, by The Wall Street Journal editorial page. Now you have the blogs that instantaneously can ramp something up to a tremendous pressure. So we are seeing this as part of a pattern, much of it clearly calculated to put the press on the defensive and make it pull back in its reporting.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about who was saying what, at the same time that you had Lawrence DiRita saying, talking about Michael Isikoff talking about that son of a blank, and basically saying that there very much was blood on hands of Newsweek? Talk about what else was being said by the government.

MICHAEL MASSING: Well, General Richard Myers, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a press conference -- actually, looked up the press conference, and it came at the very end. He was with Donald Rumsfeld, and it was when the base closings was announced, and someone at the end asked about Newsweek’s culpability, and General Myers was really, very straightforward about this. He says, “I have a general in the field, my representative in Afghanistan, and his feeling is that the Newsweek report is not at all the cause of what is happening there, that it is much more caught up in the local politics and anti-U.S. and anti-Karzai forces.” And I went back and looked at how this got reported, and it came if at all at the end of several stories, so DiRita and McClellan, their comments were getting a tremendous amount of attention, and General Myers was buried at the end of articles. I think if that had been played up more earlier that some of the statements now finally are coming around to that, as you just showed Scott McClellan saying.