UPDATED - ColdType

more can be made of.” Underscore the thought:
“MORE CAN BE MADE OF.”
The big leak
FAST forward, to Fox News this morning. The
message of the day: Blast Blix for covering this
up. It is on all the networks, too. And The New
York Times. Take that, Howell Raines. The
administration leaked the story to The Times to
undercut the editorial direction of the paper.
And where did The Times play it? Why, page
one, of course. It is today’s BIG story:
“U.S. Says Iraq Retools Rockets for Illicit Uses”
By John Cushman with Steven R Weisman
“Weapons inspectors recently discovered
rockets configured to disperse chemical or biological
agents, U.S. officials say . . . ”
Check the source.
Note the reference to the U.S. recently discovering
the issue. That was not played up on the
TV channels that reported Washington’s claims
as fact. Actually The Times story traces this
“new” disclosure back to 1996. But, never mind.
The fact is that this story, played up by all the TV
channels, is another item of which “more can be
made.” It is an allegation from officialdom, not
some revelation that Times reporters investigated
on their own. No inspectors are quoted in
the story. Not one Washington official is cited.
And all sources are unnamed.
More telling, there is no reference in the article
to the report last week that DISCOUNTED,
challenged and debunked earlier U.S. claims
about aluminum tubes, magnets and uranium
from Africa. That latter issue was, it was
revealed, based on phony documents.
So here you have it, the newspaper of record,
PRODUCING THE WAR
57
out to prove its impartiality, prominently reporting
a claim by only one side in the world debate
– on the pro-war side – with no skepticism or
context that would help readers evaluate its
credibility.
Remembering the Pentagon Papers
THIS is how the propaganda war is fought. One
bombshell after another that later proves bogus.
If you wanted some background on all of this, all
you had to do was to watch the excellent TV
movie on Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon
Papers that aired on, of all places, FX, one of Mr.
Murdoch’s channels. (Did you know he was
called “Red Rupert” back in his college days
when he kept a bust of Lenin next to his bed?
Honest!) Anyway, the film explained how the
Pentagon Papers, a secret history of the Vietnam
War, showed how the public was being told one
thing about the war, while the President was
being told the truth. And this took place during
FOUR administrations – Republican and Democratic.
Ellsberg was pictured as a hawk who became a
dove when he discovered the truth and felt he
had a duty to inform the public. It was powerful
television and timely. Its finale reminded us of
the Supreme Court decision that affirmed the
press could publish documents like these. That
was The New York Times’s finest hour. I wish the
editors of The Times had read their paper’s own
positive review and watched it before they gave
over their front page again to the claims of an
administration lacking in all credibility in matters
involving “evidence.”