Jack Shafer defends the press pre-Iraq
By ADAM REILLY | March 21, 2007
It’s hard these days to find anyone who’ll stick up for the press’s pre–Iraq War performance — but Slate media critic Jack Shafer is willing to do exactly that. “We’ve got to be careful, when we criticize press coverage, to differentiate between what the press actually reported and what we remember they reported,” argues Shafer. “I was extremely critical of Judith Miller once she reported that she had discovered the precursor chemicals for WMD; then, with the help of some very knowledgeable readers, I was able to go back and look at years of really credulous reporting by her. But in reviewing my own clips, I gave the Times a shout-out on November 2002 for their ‘aggressive coverage of the coming war with Iraq, especially the stories that illustrate the bloody downside of intervention.’Shafer cites the outstanding pre-war reporting of Knight Ridder — which Michael Massing discussed at length in the New York Review of Books — as more evidence that the media shouldn’t be cast, en masse, as pro–Bush administration lapdogs. And he argues that the existential (my word, not his) perspective of the press after 9/11 needs to be remembered as well. “When anybody reports a story you start out with a whole set of assumptions — and the day after 9/11, what were the assumptions that you as a reporter could hold on to and that could firmly ground you? The day before 9/11, you didn’t think any such thing could happen in the US. The day after 9/11, you were worried about every covered bridge in New England being taken out by some Al Qaeda cell.”
Contrast Shafer’s relatively sympathetic take with the assessment of Danny Schechter, author of the News Dissector blog, who sees the press’s pre–Iraq War quietism as just one manifestation of a fatally compromised journalistic culture. “There seems to be some sort of radar in most people working in Washington, basically indicating how far you can go and which areas are verboten,” Schechter says. “You have one eye on the blogs, one eye on what your colleagues are writing; you’re trying to cultivate sources, and in the course of doing that you go through the dance of trading information for access — which often leaves you feeling like you’re getting somewhere, and leaves them feeling like they’re co-opting you.”
Related:
Numbing carnage, The Arab street, Quotes + numbers, January 27, 2006, More 
- Numbing carnage
On the morning of March 8, viewers had their first sip of coffee to a grisly sight on the news shows: grainy video of roughly two-dozen dead Iraqis lined up in a makeshift morgue, many of them apparently bound and strangled.
- The Arab street
Watching the news lately, you can’t help thinking that nobody has an idea what’s going on in the Arab and Islamic world.
- Quotes + numbers, January 27, 2006
4.9: Number of minimum-wage workers it takes to rent a two-bedroom apartment in Greater Boston.
- It’s all true
Here’s a selection of non-fiction books that the Phoenix liked this year, in alphabetical order by author.
- Phoenix coverage of the terrorist attacks
2001-2006
- 9/11: The original email conspiracies
With football cancelled, some Americans found themselves with little to do in the week after 9/11.
- Post-primary revelations
Pernod and grapefruit in hand, Phillipe & Jorge offer a little public policy overview while hanging out of our chauffeur-driven Bentley, screaming, “Mira, mira,”
- The JonBenet factor
Five summers ago, in the weeks before terrorists slammed fully loaded passenger planes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, national television was obsessed with what? The Taliban? Osama bin Laden? Nope. Sharks.
- Bond traders
The latest casualty of the war on terror: Pierce Brosnan. Five car stud: Daniel Craig delivers a meaty Bond
- Wine tasting
Quick: get yourself over to the Seaport World Trade Center and Seaport Hotel.
- Civic Duty
Falling Down takes a post-9/11 turn in this psychological thriller from Canadian filmmaker Jeff Renfroe.
- Less
Topics:
Media -- Dont Quote Me
, Judith Miller, Jack Shafer, Al Qaeda, More
, Judith Miller, Jack Shafer, Al Qaeda, Terrorism, War and Conflict, September 11 Attacks, Danny Schechter, Michael Massing, Less
