The New York Times‘ John Burns on the lack of objectivity in Iraq coverage (thanks, Andrew Sullivan) :
Terror, totalitarian states, and their ways are nothing new to me, but I felt from the start that this was in a category by itself, with the possible exception in the present world of North Korea. I felt that that was the central truth that has to be told about this place. It was also the essential truth that was untold by the vast majority of correspondents here. Why? Because they judged that the only way they could keep themselves in play here was to pretend that it was okay.
There were correspondents who thought it appropriate to seek the approbation of the people who governed their lives. […] Senior members of [Iraq’s] information ministry took hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes from these television correspondents who then behaved as if they were in Belgium. […]
In one case, a correspondent actually went to the Internet Center at the Al-Rashid Hotel and printed out copies of his and other people’s stories–mine included–specifically in order to be able to show the difference between himself and the others. He wanted to show what a good boy he was compared to this enemy of the state. He was with a major American newspaper.
Yeah, it was an absolutely disgraceful performance. CNN’s Eason Jordan’s op-ed piece in The New York Times missed that point completely. The point is not whether we protect the people who work for us by not disclosing the terrible things they tell us. Of course we do. But the people who work for us are only one thousandth of one percent of the people of Iraq. So why not tell the story of the other people of Iraq…?
[…] We now know that this place was a lot more terrible than even people like me had thought. There is such a thing as absolute evil. I think people just simply didn’t recognize it. They rationalized it away. [Editor & Publisher]
For responses, including one by Dan Rather click here.
Related Reading: Saddam Hussein’s Real Ministers of Disinformation Come Out of the Closet