SORRY, OUR BAD: The Washington Post still doesn't get it.
Friday, August 20, 2004 at 07:34AM
TheSpook
WITH ALL DUE respect to the Washington Post 's Howard Kurtz, who was
polite to me when we spoke on the phone earlier this year, I had
to laugh at his 3000-word "We Fucked Up on Iraq" piece that came
out last week. Kurtz's Aug. 12 piece, entitled "The Post on WMDs: An
Inside Story; Prewar Articles Questioning Threat Often Didn't
Make Front Page," was the latest in what is likely to be a long
series of tepid media mea culpas about pre-war Iraq reporting. The
piece comes on the heels of the New York Times ' infamous "The
Bitch Set Us Up" piece from this past May, in which that paper
implicitly blamed hyperambitious hormone-case Judith Miller for its
hilarious prewar failures.The story shouldn't have been, "Are
there WMDs?" The story should have been, "Why are they pulling
this stunt? And why now?" That was the real mystery. It still is. We
didn't need a named source in the Pentagon to tell us that. And neither
did the Washington Post. [more ]
NewsHour Analysis: Media Reconsiders Prewar Coverage [more ]
David Corn: WP did better job than NYT in examining WH's pre-war claims [more ]