It is the responsibility of every journalist to report the news truthfully, without fear or favor, and to not let their ideological beliefs stand in the way of accurate reporting. And in this modern age, watchful citizens on the political right have played an integral part in ensuring the integrity of the press by holding journalists responsible for any inaccuracies, whether the result of bias or no, in their news reporting.
So, let’s recap.
THE REPORTER: Dan Rather, CBS News.
THE STORY: Documents reveal that President Bush, having dodged service in Vietnam by joining the Air National Guard, failed to meet the requirements of his Guard position.
THE TRUTH: The documents were not legitimately obtained.
THE FALLOUT: Right-wingers howled for Rather’s blood, hastening his resignation and citing the affair as evidence of a liberal bias in media.
THE ENDGAME: Rather left his job, three producers were fired, and the right became almost totally embittered against mainstream media. The documents were never proven to be forgeries, however, and it remains a fact that President Bush avoided service in Vietnam and that no evidence exists that he fulfilled his obligations in the Guard.
THE REPORTER: Scott Thomas Beauchamp, The New Republic.
THE STORY: American soldiers in Iraq, including Beauchamp himself, behaved in a manner unbecoming a member of the Armed forces.
THE TRUTH: An Army investigation established that Beauchamp exaggerated some of his claims and allegedly fabricated others. Beauchamp’s fellow servicemen denied his stories.
THE FALLOUT: Right-wingers howled for Beauchamp’s blood, suggesting that he should be criminally prosecuted and citing the affair as evidence of the corrupt nature of the left-wing media.
THE ENDGAME: Beauchamp was fired, The New Republic issues a retraction, and the right cited the case as proof of the lies of the liberal press. The denials of wrongdoing by Beauchamp’s comrades, on the other hand, are no more definitive proof that the wrongdoing took place than his claims of their complicity are proof that it did, and a number of American soldiers continue to behave in a manner unbecoming a member of the armed forces in Iraq.
THE REPORTER: Jamil Hussein, the Associated Press.
THE STORY: A massacre of civilians occurred in Baghdad, including the near-destruction of several mosques, as reported by Hussein, a captain in the Iraqi national police.
THE TRUTH: Reports of a civilian massacre were unconfirmed and the damage to the mosques was not total.
THE FALLOUT: Right-wingers howled for Hussein’s blood, with many claiming he didn’t even exist and citing the affair as evidence of how reporting from Iraq cannot be trusted.
THE ENDGAME: Hussein, who in fact does exist, was arrested for talking to the press without permission. Dozens of witnesses and other journalists testified that a large number of civilians were murdered, though many chose to remain anonymous because people who speak to the press are often targeted for killing in Iraq. Photographs of the mosques show extensive damage. The AP notes that during the period in which right-wing blogs were claiming that Jamil Hussein did not exist and was merely an invented figure by which to spread false stories about the bad news in Iraq, thousands of Iraqis were killed.
THE REPORTER: Judith Miller, The New York Times.
THE STORY: Iraq under Saddam Hussein had fully reconstituted its weapons of mass destruction program and was actively working towards acquiring a nuclear bomb.
THE TRUTH: Iraq under Saddam Hussein had no working WMD program, and in over four years of occupation, no such weapons have ever been found, nor have the means of constructing them.
THE FALLOUT: Right-wingers, who normally have nothing but bad things to say about The New York Times, found nothing suspicious about Miller’s reporting, and embraced her stories as definitive proof that Iraq was a threat.
THE ENDGAME: Miller, who in addition to having printed without cavil stories fed to her by the Bush administration, was hip-deep in the Valerie Plame scandal, for which conservatives made her a martyr figure. She retired after 30 years with the paper, making no apologies for her malreportage, and has since taken a high-paying job with the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a right-wing think tank.
THE REPORTER: Michael Ledeen, Pajamas Media.
THE STORY: Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, died on January 4 of this year .
THE TRUTH: Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, is in fact still alive.
THE FALLOUT: Pajamas Media, which was founded as a vehicle for the web-based “New Media” that would replace the inaccurate and biased reporting of the mainstream media, did not find it necessary to issue an apology for having falsely reported the death of a major world leader. Reports of Khamenei’s death can still be found on their website.
THE ENDGAME: Ledeen is not only still employed, he is still employed by Pajamas Media. His columns ceaselessly fulminating for war with Iran are enjoyed weekly by PJM’s readers.
THE REPORTER: Michael Yon, “Michael Yon Online Magazine”.
THE STORY: Elements of al-Q’aeda in Iraq cooked a young boy and forced his parents to eat him.
THE TRUTH: No confirmation has been found that al-Q’aeda terrorists are borrowing their tactical plans from the Brothers Grimm.
THE FALLOUT: When some observers questioned Yon’s unquestioning reportage of a variant on the blood libel, Yon equivocated, first blaming his source within the military, then blaming the source’s source, an Iraqi government official. At no point did he accept blame for having published such an outrageous story without bothering to verify it, claiming only that he could “offer no opinion about the veracity” of the account – an unusual position for a journalist to take.
THE ENDGAME: Michael Yon is still hugely popular with right-wingers, who call him an independent reporter with no ideological leanings; some even go as far as to call his activities heroic, and in marked contrast to the biased and negative reporting of the mainstream media.
THE REPORTER: W. Thomas Smith Jr., The National Review.
THE STORY: Hundreds of armed men were gathered in a Lebanese refugee camp, and up to 5,000 armed terrorists were running amok in the Christian areas of Beirut with the full blessing of the authorities.
THE TRUTH: Smith actually saw two men with rifles in a tent, and a couple of guys with radios hanging around in downtown Beirut.
THE FALLOUT: When observers noted that Smith’s accounts of thousands of armed men swarming around Beirut had not been reported by any other sources, his defenders on the right claimed the observers were leftist tools, his editor blamed it on the Arab tendency to lie, and Smith himself said he did not find it necessary to defend himself against the false charges of terrorists.
THE ENDGAME: The National Review, who helped lead the charge against The New Republic during l’affaire de Beauchamp, stated that they will continue to print Smith’s stories “on a submission-by-submission basis and will continue to do so unless we have reason to decide otherwise”.
Say it with me, now, everybody:
DAMN LIBERAL MEDIA!
