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Taking stock of an imperiled free press

News you can lose
By ADAM REILLY  |  February 7, 2007

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Judith Miller
Frontline’s new PBS series on the shifting balance-of-power between the government and the media — New War: Secrets, Spin and the Future of the News — isn’t uplifting. Far from it. But it’s essential viewing for anyone interested in the future of a free US press.

The first installment, which will air locally on WGBH-TV (Channel 2) at 9 pm, on February 13, focuses on the Valerie Plame affair and its implications for reporters’ ability to protect their sources. Here’s the gist: when the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matt Cooper of Time, who were contesting special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s request that they testify in the Plame case, it toppled a precarious tradition of reporter-source confidentiality in one fell swoop.

That story alone is worth telling — but the first episode of News War also offers a searing indictment of the complicity of the press in the run-up to the Iraq War. The highlight, if that’s the right term, is this exchange between Frontline’s Lowell Bergman and the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, which starts with Woodward condemning Miller’s now-discredited reporting on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.

WOODWARD: She had the wrong sources. . . . If your sources are wrong, you’re wrong. And you have to accept responsibility.
BERGMAN: You believed there was WMD in Iraq.
WOODWARD: I did.
BERGMAN: You said as much publicly.
WOODWARD: Yes.
Cue tape of Larry King interviewing Woodward prior to the invasion.
CALLER: What happens if we go to war against Iraq and we knock ’em right out, and we find no weapons of mass destruction?
WOODWARD: I think the chance of that happening is about zero. There’s just too much there.

If you’re looking for journalistic heroes, they’re hard to come by here. But that doesn’t render the government’s increasing aggression toward the press any less troubling. Watch, and be dismayed.

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  Topics: Media -- Dont Quote Me , Judith Miller , Valerie Plame , Bob Woodward ,  More more >
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Comments
Taking stock of an imperiled free press
Despite all his resources, access, and money - despite everyone in the world saying there were no WMD's - despite weapons inspectors ranting in public that there were no WMD's - despite the mountains of contrary evidence freely available online - despite the fact that countless reliable foreign government sources refuted WMD's - Bob Woodward would have us believe he was so completely fooled and so wholeheartedly believed that in fact we were in such dire danger - from a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11 - that we had to rush into war? Did Woodward not suppose there was at least some chance that everyone else was right and we were wrong? And knowing the consequences, and the enormous gravity that goes into the decision to make war, Woodward could have chosen to focus his energy on the possibility that this was all wrong and used his position to sway things back in the direction of peace and civility. But he didn't. Woodward used his press to cheerlead the march to war like a high school cheerleader chanting Go Team at the big homecoming. Woodward chose to be the waterboy for the war machine. And now he wants to claim stupidity and apologize. Well I guess we can all agree it was a stupid idea. Too bad he didn't agree with us before the bombs started falling. Should we accept his apologies? Well it's not us who Woodward and all the other Warmakers and War cheerleaders to whom Woodward owes apology to. Woodward owes his apology to the mothers and fathers and children of the hundreds of thousands he in full faculty helped assure would be slaughtered. My opin? Woodward is not stupid. Woodward is in fact a liar. Can he apologize? Sure, but not to us. I think he and all his ilk should be dressed up in cheerleader outfits, given pom poms, and shipped over to Iraq to publicly apologize to the widows, orphans, and grieving parents of Bagdad. Isn't it odd how a the murder of a single person is heinous but war is glorious? In the end, war is of course nothing more than organized mass murder. Put in the similar scenario, Woodward had 9 out of 10 people shouting it's the wrong guy, don't shoot. Woodward fired, killed, and now wants to say he had no idea. Woodward and his associated major media, are liars, warmakers, accessories. They are Goebbels and Hearst. The Reichstag, the Maine and Tonkin. I wonder if any of them believe in God as the pose in church. And do they also think God is stupid that he will believe their propaganda? Thanks for the small shred of truth. You should do more of this. Perhaps the Phoenix will inherit the journalistic credibility so entirely lost by Woodward and the Associated Propagandists.
By Cole K on 02/12/2007 at 11:02:07
Taking stock of an imperiled free press
Frontline’s new PBS series New [SIC] War: Secrets, Spin and the Future of the News — isn’t uplifting." Actually, it's called News War.
By heckler on 02/16/2007 at 4:57:05

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