Tuesday, January 18 2005
NOT QUITE FAIR: You know we've reached a new low in the annals of media bias and duplicity when the leaders of an organization with the name "Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting" (FAIR) can get away with penning an op-ed like this:

The investigation did document serious failures in 60 Minutes Wednesday's efforts to check its source's claims - an endemic problem in the news business. If the investigation had called attention to the issue of credulous journalism, it would have performed a valuable service for the public. But the media discussion of the incident generally has treated it as either an aberration or as an emblem of left-wing media bias.

Lost amid the hours of coverage of the affair was what should have been the central question: Did George W. Bush, in reality, properly fulfill his National Guard requirements?

Attempting to minimize the magnitude of the CBS scandal by writing it off as a simple failure to check a source's claims is like dismissing Enron as just a simple failure of accounting practices.

This was not a metro reporter failing to source a claim on page D-22 of a local paper. Nor was it an individual act of embellishment or dishonesty a la Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass. Memogate stands as the single most egregious example of coordinated, unethical and biased journalism we've seen in a very long time - at least so far as we know. There is simply no telling what went before.

Still, the authors of the column need to minimize the CBS fiasco so they can trumpet the true scandal:

Other reporters have received much less scrutiny and punishment for offenses of far greater magnitude, and with much more significant consequences to society. The New York Times, for example, published numerous allegations about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that turned out to be false. Those stories did a great deal to sell the White House's bogus case for war.

While the Times has admitted that some of its WMD reporting was "insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged," the reporter most responsible for those stories, Judith Miller, was never sanctioned and still continues to report on Iraq.

The lesson of the CBS investigation, then, could very well be this: Journalists can be punished for bad reporting if they have offended the wrong people. If they have merely helped steer the country into war under false pretenses, their careers can continue unimpeded.

This is absurd. Judith Miller should be punished for what? Not seeing into the future? For accurately reporting what the United States government, the current and former administrations, and nearly every other intelligence agency in the world believed to be true about Saddam Hussein's WMD capabilities?

To compare Miller's reporting to the hatchet job by Mapes & Co. is, to be overgenerous, not very FAIR. Then again, if you read the first few lines of the mission statement of this outfit it's quite clear that fairness isn't what they're after:

FAIR is a media watch organization offering constructive criticism in an effort to correct media imbalance....We scrutinize media practices that slight public interest, peace and minority viewpoints.

All of us who founded FAIR have media backgrounds. Our sympathies are with the working press. We do not view reporters, editors and producers as our enemy. Nor do we hunt for conspiracies...

How quaint: A bunch of former liberal journalists offering "constructive criticism" to current liberal journalists. Tell me again why so many people distrust the mainstream media? - T. Bevan 10:15 am Link | Email | Send to a Friend