Anonymous source in newspaper stories equals LIAR

Daniel Okrent is the Times' public editor, which the paper says represents the readers. What he writes is more damning than the Times previous apology to its readers. If he really represents the readers of the paper, he should hasten Judith Millers's firing. When I read the NYT, every story is taken with a grain of salt wondering whose agenda is being pushed. Chalabi's niece worked for the Times? That engenders trust {not}. Does character, integrity mean anything anymore?

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/weekinreview/30bott.html?hp>

CODDLING SOURCES There is nothing more toxic to responsible journalism than an anonymous source. There is often nothing more necessary, too; crucial stories might never see print if a name had to be attached to every piece of information. But a newspaper has an obligation to convince readers why it believes the sources it does not identify are telling the truth. That automatic editor defense, "We're not confirming what he says, we're just reporting it," may apply to the statements of people speaking on the record. For anonymous sources, it's worse than no defense. It's a license granted to liars.

The contract between a reporter and an unnamed source - the offer of information in return for anonymity - is properly a binding one. But I believe that a source who turns out to have lied has breached that contract, and can fairly be exposed. The victims of the lie are the paper's readers, and the contract with them supersedes all others. (See Chalabi, Ahmad, et al.) Beyond that, when the cultivation of a source leads to what amounts to a free pass for the source, truth takes the fall. A reporter who protects a source not just from exposure but from unfriendly reporting by colleagues is severely compromised. Reporters must be willing to help reveal a source's misdeeds; information does not earn immunity. To a degree, Chalabi's fall from grace was handled by The Times as if flipping a switch; proper coverage would have been more like a thermostat, constantly taking readings and then adjusting to the surrounding reality. (While I'm on the subject: Readers were never told that Chalabi's niece was hired in January 2003 to work in The Times's Kuwait bureau. She remained there until May of that year.)

article.

"To anyone who read the paper between September 2002 and June 2003, the impression that Saddam Hussein possessed, or was acquiring, a frightening arsenal of W.M.D. seemed unmistakable."

but where is the name, Judith Miller?

but then the author says,

"The failure was not individual, but institutional."

Well, what the hell are we supposed to do with THAT?

Are we supposed to STOP READING the New York Times?

Perhaps we should.


Shame upon the New York Times.

and that is also why this is happening. it's his job to fix what's so broken. hold him to it.

(perhaps mentioning it belongs in front page BOLD headlines)

public@nytimes.com


peace

Taking this thesis to it logical extreme, one should conclude that the Washington Post should have canned Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein for their coverage of the Watergate break in of 1972.

Woodward in particular used a source who, to this day, is publicly known as "Deep Throat", after a popular pornographic film of the day.

In any case, this anonymous source with such a lowly, disreputable handle turned out to have information accurate enough to bring down a sitting President.

The Watergate hearing led to the discovery of the truth.

The coverage given by the NYT has been proven to be untrue.



Truth trumps everything.

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He will spend hours making every effort and gathering every source of information necessary to support his argument.

In this he is very un-Rabbit like.

1. The Ervin Committee would not have been convened had the Washington Post not covered the story in the first place.

2. The coverage by The New York Times was indeed patently untrue. However, as a general principle, anonymous sources are toxic to journalism is a piece of nonsense. Deep Throat would never have spoken to Bob Woodward had he known his name would have been seen in the press.

Woodward used Deep Throat as a source for his information, but he verified it with other sources. The problem with Judith Miller's reporting of Saddam's weapons arsenal in The New York Times is not that the source is anonymous, but that she did not verify what that source told her.

I don't believe Ms. Miller has a good excuse. I am one of many who marched against the invasion prior to it based on information found in sources other than The New York Times that contradicted much of what Ms. Miller was reporting. Culling information from the those sources, I wrote this about three weeks before the invasion:

The reasons given for the war have been that Saddam Hussein is a threat to America; that he is a threat to his neighbors in the Middle East; that he aids al-Qaida; that he is in material breach of UN resolutions; that he possesses weapons of mass destruction; that he is a brutal dictator.
The first reason is simply preposterous. Whatever weapons Saddam possesses or merely have been suggested he possesses, none are able to reach the shores of the United States. For the second charge, Saddam's neighbors have shown very little enthusiasm for this war. Were he a bona fide threat, they would be showing much more. That he aids or is even associated in any way with al-Qaida or Osama bin Laden is absurd. Osama regards Saddam as a socialist infidel who should be overthrown and killed. Meanwhile, Islamic fundamentalists in Saddam's Iraq come in for some of Saddam's harshest repressive measures. These two are not allies. The charges that he is in material breach of UN resolutions and that he possess weapons of mass destruction are for the most part the same charge, since the resolutions of which he accused of breaching are those that directed his disarm after the 1991 war as well as a more recent resolution under which inspectors have returned to Iraq. The inspectors have found nothing of significance and while the chief inspectors, Dr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei, have expressed a belief that Iraq's cooperation could be better, they have not indicated that they have been prevented from executing their mission.
That Saddam is a brutal dictator is true. However, this is not in and of itself reason to go to war. If it were, we would go to war against many other brutal dictators, some of whom are our allies.

By the time I wrote that, my information was based on the fact the Niger document was a forgery (source: Dr. ElBaradei's report to the UN Security Council, February 14, 2003), that Scott Ritter was stating that as of late 1998 when UN inspectors left Iraq Saddam's weapons had been destroyed and that anything that was still there would have lost its potency, that General Kamel had ordered Iraq's chemical weapons destroyed shortly after the first Gulf War, that reports that Mohammed Atta had met with an Iraqi intelligence agent had been debunked, and that intelligence was being cooked in the Pentagon.

If I knew that, there's no reason Ms. Miller couldn't have checked it out. She doesn't have a leg on which to stand.

new all that stuff way before Powell goes to U. N. and Goergie's state of the Union declaration of war.
Thanks for the recap
KL

They know Bush* is going to be sent to that hell he calls home and their preparing to hand Kerry his head when he's elected President? I think so. I don't believe the sincerity of anyone in the media after all the liars coddling to this corrupt illegal immoral soulless administration. Todays American media are unAmerican and have to do more than say I'm sorry...trust me now.

Even in this piece, the desire to maintain the lie apparently can't be escaped.

"... a series of aggressively reported stories detailing the misinformation, disinformation and suspect analysis that led virtually the entire world to believe Hussein had W.M.D. at his disposal."

That's utterly false. The fact is that "virtually the entire world" has known all along that Bush and the rest of his criminal cabal were making the whole thing up.

knew this war was a mistake and did NOT believe the NYT, and in the case of England, Italy and Spain, did NOT believe their prime ministers. All of us on this Forum knew the Patriot Act was a slippery slope that would be turned against Americans, knew repugnantcans would use the war to shove down our throats other spending sprees under the guise of national security. I admit, tho, I believed we would be using Iraqi oil to pay for it all. Now that turns out to be a lie, too. Excuse me, repugnantcans don't lie, they 'misspeak'.

while they are trying to show it matters to them.


Okrent (ombudsman)
public@nytimes.com


peace

Such errors and rush to judgment is not recent. Remember Richard Jewel who was publicly convicted for the Olympic bombing or the number of articles proclaiming that the Oklahoma bombing was a foreign terrorist act before settling on Timothy McVeigh. Have we also forgotten all the Clinton Scandal headlines that turned out to be false? Admittedly, the lead up to the war was the apex of erroneous reporting; but, the build up to the apex has been long in coming. Things seem to be getting better; but, there is still a long way to go.