Jim Lehrer: Well there's no question that the public was not well served by the information that was available prior to the war. In other words, the build-up to the war was not filled with the kind of 'on the other hand' information that such a monumental decision should have had with it. I mean it's all well and good to say correctly that the news organisations, including ours, should have been more vigorous in pursuing the other side, pursuing those who say 'Hey, wait a minute, this isn't going to work', or 'This isn't justified by the facts' or whatever.
But we've got to remember if you're a reporter, you've got to interview people, people have got to talk, you've got to have information. Remember, 85% of the Congress in the United States, including the Democrats, favoured this war. They were not that many people questioning the validity of this, particularly after that monumental appearance by Secretary of State, Colin Powell, before the United Nations Security Council.
There were some, particularly in The Washington Post, a reporter named Walter Pincus wrote several stories that questioned what was going on. We had a lot of people on our program talking about it also beforehand. However, there wasn't an awful lot of information, there weren't people who had information that could be shared with a reporter and thus with a television broadcast or a newspaper. So there was a failure of information there's no question about it, and the press bears some responsibility, but not all the responsibility, is what I'm saying.
Skip noted the above. It's from The Media Report on Australia's ABC radio and you can listen or read the transcript from the show hosted by Anthony Funnell. The guest? From Ava and my TV commentary yesterday: "There are few second chances for women. It's why Judy Woodruff is a 'substitute anchor' on PBS's NewsHour while the (White male) host with the bad dye job turns 74 this week and will continue dottering on air for another decade unless someone does a serious intervention."
Jim Lehrer is a public embarrassment and needs to retire or be retired.
This is from Bill Moyers Journal (the two hour debute of the series):
BILL MOYERS: Critics point to September eight, 2002 and to your show in particular, as the classic case of how the press and the government became inseparable.
Someone in the administration plants a dramatic story in the NEW YORK TIMES And then the Vice President comes on your show and points to the NEW YORK TIMES. It's a circular, self-confirming leak.
TIM RUSSERT: I don't know how Judith Miller and Michael Gordon reported that story, who their sources were. It was a front-page story of the NEW YORK TIMES. When Secretary Rice and Vice President Cheney and others came up that Sunday morning on all the Sunday shows, they did exactly that.
TIM RUSSERT: What my concern was, is that there were concerns expressed by other government officials. And to this day, I wish my phone had rung, or I had access to them.
BILL MOYERS: Bob Simon didn't wait for the phone to ring.
BILL MOYERS: When you said a moment ago when we started talking to people who knew about aluminum tubes. What people-who were you talking to?
BOB SIMON: We were talking to people - to scientists - to scientists and to researchers and to people who had been investigating Iraq from the start.
BILL MOYERS: Would these people have been available to any reporter who called or were they exclusive sources for 60 Minutes?
BOB SIMON: No, I think that many of them would have been available to any reporter who called.
BILL MOYERS: And you just picked up the phone?
BOB SIMON: Just picked up the phone.
BILL MOYERS: Talked to them?
BOB SIMON: Talked to them and then went down with the cameras.
Now let's return to the segment Skip highlighted from Australia's ABC radio and let's go slowly.
Antony Funnell: Now another issue I'd like to raise with you is the coverage of the Iraq war. In America of course there's been ongoing debate as there has been in Australia, about whether sections of the media suspended their scepticism and their scrutiny prior, during and after the 2003 War. What's your opinion?
A reasonable questioon. Did the media suspend their sceptiscism and their scrutiny?
All in bold below will be Jim Lehrer unless otherwise noted.
Well there's no question that the public was not well served by the information that was available prior to the war.
Today there's no question. When valid complaints were raised in real times excuses were offered but it's good to know that, in retrospect, Lehrer can admit that the public "was not well served." It would be better if he could admit that they weren't served at all by that nonsense posing as journalism.
In other words, the build-up to the war was not filled with the kind of 'on the other hand' information that such a monumental decision should have had with it.
The dottering old fool's "answer" to journalism is on-this-hand-on-that-hand. On the issue of war, that's his answer looking back? Not that reporters should have done their damn job to determine validity of claims, just that they should have offered he-said-she-said.
I mean it's all well and good to say correctly that the news organisations, including ours, should have been more vigorous in pursuing the other side, pursuing those who say 'Hey, wait a minute, this isn't going to work', or 'This isn't justified by the facts' or whatever.
It is "all well and good" because it is in fact the job of a news outlet. The fact that someone with
over 30 years of anchoring one program didn't grasp that, didn't fight for it and didn't do a damn thing is only one of the many reasons he needs to go.
But we've got to remember if you're a reporter, you've got to interview people, people have got to talk, you've got to have information.
You have to have the information? People have got to talk?
Again, Bill Moyers speaking with Bob Simon:
BILL MOYERS: Would these people have been available to any reporter who called or were they exclusive sources for 60 Minutes?
BOB SIMON: No, I think that many of them would have been available to any reporter who called.
BILL MOYERS: And you just picked up the phone?
BOB SIMON: Just picked up the phone.
BILL MOYERS: Talked to them?
BOB SIMON: Talked to them and then went down with the cameras.
You've got to have information, whines Lehrer. People like Bob Simon got it by doing their job.
People like Lehrer embarrassed themselves then and do so now by (and include Tim Russert in this) whining that the phone didn't ring. Are they characters in a Dorothy Parker short story or journalists?
Remember, 85% of the Congress in the United States, including the Democrats, favoured this war.
I'm not in the mood for math this morning. As I remember it, 373 voted in favor of the 2002 authorization (which had guidelines Bully Boy didn't meet) and 156 voted against it (the 156 is composed of 23 in the Senate voting no and 133 in the House voting no). I'd love to know where he's getting 85% because that doesn't look like 85% to me.
They were not that many people questioning the validity of this, particularly after that monumental appearance by Secretary of State, Colin Powell, before the United Nations Security Council.
There weren't many questioning who were booked on The NewsHour.
Democracy Now's segment on that was entitled "Powell Addresses the UN Security Council to Argue for a First-Strike Attack On Iraq; Most of His Claims Can't Be Verified" (February 6, 2003). It featured Phyllis Bennis, James Paul and As'ad AbuKhalil as guests.
Back to Bill Moyers' Journal:
BILL MOYERS: In January of '03 Hanley wrote about the suspicious sites that the us and British governments had earlier identified as major concerns. "No smoking guns in...Almost 400 inspections." He reported. It ought to have cast serious doubt on the white house's entire evaluation of the iraqi threat. But reporting like this was overshadowed by the drumbeat from Washington -- which is why, Hanley says, sometimes his editors balked when he wrote that the White House lacked firm evidence on WMDS.
CHARLES HANLEY: And that would be stricken from my copy because it would strike some editors as a-- as tendentious. As sort of an attack or a-- some sort of-- allegation rather than a fact. You know and we don't want our reporters alleging things. We, you know, we just report the facts. Well it was a fact. It was a very important fact that seemed to be lost on an awful lot of journalists unfortunately.
BILL MOYERS: Six weeks before the invasion, with the facts still in short supply, the American Secretary of State went before the United Nations.
COLIN POWELL (UN Security Council 2/5/03): I cannot tell you everything that we know. But what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have learned over the years, is deeply troubling.
CHARLES HANLEY: One major problem was that-- Secretary Powell barely acknowledged that there were inspections going on. It got to ridiculous points such as-- his complaining about the fact that they'd put a roof over this open air shed where they were testing missiles.
COLIN POWELL (Security Council 2/5/03): This photograph was taken in April of 2002. Since then, the test stand has been finished and a roof has been put over it so it will be harder for satellites to see what's going on underneath the test stand.
CHARLES HANLEY: What he neglected to mention was that the inspectors were underneath, watching what was going on.
COLIN POWELL (Security Council 2/5/03): A single drop of VX on the skin will kill in minutes. Four tons!
CHARLES HANLEY: he didn't point out that most of that had already been destroyed. And-- on point after point he failed to point out that these facilities about which he was raising such alarm-- were under repeated inspections by-- by good-- expert people with very good equipment, and who were leaving behind cameras and other monitoring equipment to keep us-- a continuing eye on it
COLIN POWELL (Security Council 2/5/03): Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world.
ERIC BOEHLERT: The holes in the-- his presentation became immediate within days if not hours.
COLIN POWELL: But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder.
ERIC BOEHLERT: One of the first big embarrassments was-- Powell had talked about this British intelligence report.
COLIN POWELL: I would call my colleagues attention to the fine paper that United Kingdom distributed yesterday, which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities.
BILL MOYERS: Supposedly that 'exquisite detail' from British intelligence came from a top secret dossier
ERIC BOEHLERT: Literally within a day or two it was-- it was proven in the-- in the British press that that had simply been-- downloaded off the internet. And was plagiarized. And it actually contains the typos that were in the original.
BRITISH REPORTER: (2/7/03): The British government dossier is supposed to be about Iraqi deception and concealment. It says it draws upon a number of sources including intelligence material. Well, actually what it largely draws on is a thesis written by a Californian post graduate student. . .
ERIC BOEHLERT: That was just the first of many embarrassments that were to come. But within days-- the British press was going crazy over this-- over this revelation.
BRITISH REPORTER: As for the student himself, he's accused the government of plagiarism.
This is part of what makes up "the blot" Collie refers to today. Let's finish with Lehrer (something PBS should have done years ago).
There were some, particularly in The Washington Post, a reporter named Walter Pincus wrote several stories that questioned what was going on. We had a lot of people on our program talking about it also beforehand.
Lie. (Not that Pincus wasn't skeptical. He was. His reports ran inside the paper repeatedly while unsourced claims made the front page.) They did not have 'a lot of people" talking in any manner similar to what Pincus was writing. They had Judith Miller (on speed dial, satellite phone and global tracking device apparently) and a lot of others who keep their heads bowed now and try not to draw attention to themselves but were out there pushing false claims and bad reporting.
Back to Bill Moyers Journal:
WARREN STROBEL: How many times did I get invited on the talk-- how many times did you get invited on a talk show?
JONATHAN LANDAY: I think maybe on-
WARREN STROBEL: Yeah, not the big talk shows.
JONATHAN LANDAY: Actually-
WARREN STROBEL: Not the big Sunday shows-
JONATHAN LANDAY: You know what? I'll tell you who invited me on-- on a talk-- on a talk shows- C-Span.
The McClatchy Boys, working for the then Knight-Ridder and two of the few who've never had to explain why they were sleeping on the job because they weren't. While Lehrer went to work in footie pee jays, they worked. And for those who would like to read the real time reporting that Strobel, Landay and others worked on, click here because McClatchy Newspapers has created one folder to highlight it.
However, there wasn't an awful lot of information, there weren't people who had information that could be shared with a reporter and thus with a television broadcast or a newspaper. So there was a failure of information there's no question about it, and the press bears some responsibility, but not all the responsibility, is what I'm saying.
A failure of information? No a failure of people to do their jobs. The McClatchy Boys, Amy Goodman, Bob Simon, Robert Parry and many others demonstrate Lehrer's lying. And it's lying. What the debut of Bill Moyers' new program should have done was end the excuses and the lies of the lead-up-to-the-war coverage. Lerher thinks he can act like it didn't happen. He's like a guy who pled guilty to a DUI two weeks ago and now, at a party, wants to deny that he was ever drunk.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
Added remember what's going on today (from Cindy Sheehan):
Camp Casey Peace Institute
MOTHER OF A MARCH
The time for being polite to our war-mongering politicians and organizations which support them is over. We mothers have to stand up and put our bodies on the line for peace and humanity.
We must look into the best parts of ourselves that make us mothers willing to care for and protect all children of the world, not just our own. We need to access our hearts and souls to lead from a place of compassion and love not from war/fear mongering, hatred and disgraceful threats and use of bullying force.
I am calling on Mothers of the world to join us in Washington DC for a "10,000 Mother of a March" on the day after Mother's Day, Monday, May 14th, 2007.
Marches on the weekends are not effective, we need to shut the city of DC down! We will surround Congress and demand an end to this evil occupation and refuse to leave until the Congressional Leadership agrees with us, or throws us in jail!Meet at Layfayette Park at noon. We will rally then march to Congres
sI am calling on Mothers of the world to descend on US embassies all over the world that day. Imagine 10,000 Iraqi women marching on the Green Zone: marching in solidarity with us to end the slaughter of their children. I believe millions of mothers around the world are tired of their children being used as cannon fodder and political tools in the games of war and killer sanctions. Together we will stop the war machine.
Mothers united will never be defeated!
anthony funnell
democracy now
jim lehrer
amy goodman
bob simon
bill moyers
bill moyers journal
warren strobel
jonathan landay
mcclatchy newspapers
mcclatchy boysthe third estate sunday review
