New York Times ursäkt

New York Times har en intressant mea culpa om sin tidigare okritiska hållning till Bush-regeringens osanningar och lögner om upprinnelsen till Irakkriget.

FROM THE EDITORS
The Times and Iraq


Over the last year this newspaper has shone the bright light of hindsight on decisions that led the United States into Iraq. We have examined the failings of American and allied intelligence, especially on the issue of Iraq's weapons and possible Iraqi connections to international terrorists. We have studied the allegations of official gullibility and hype. It is past time we turned the same light on ourselves.

In doing so — reviewing hundreds of articles written during the prelude to war and into the early stages of the occupation — we found an enormous amount of journalism that we are proud of....

But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.

The problematic articles ... shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on "regime change" in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks....Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations — in particular, this one.
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On Oct. 26 and Nov. 8, 2001, for example, Page 1 articles cited Iraqi defectors who described a secret Iraqi camp where Islamic terrorists were trained and biological weapons produced. These accounts have never been independently verified.

On Dec. 20, 2001, another front-page article began, "An Iraqi defector who described himself as a civil engineer said he personally worked on renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in underground wells, private villas and under the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as recently as a year ago." ...

On Sept. 8, 2002, the lead article of the paper was headlined "U.S. Says Hussein Intensified Quest for A-Bomb Parts." .... Administration officials were allowed to hold forth at length on why this evidence of Iraq's nuclear intentions demanded that Saddam Hussein be dislodged from power: "The first sign of a `smoking gun,' they argue, may be a mushroom cloud."
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We consider the story of Iraq's weapons, and of the pattern of misinformation, to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight.

Den här ursäkten är ärlig men den är inte självkritisk nog att ta upp frågan om varför New York Times, en av världens mest välrenommerade tidningar, kunde falla så pladask i så många år för Bush-regeringens rena och skära lögner. Varför ställde de sig så fenomenalt okritiska och rent blåögda till dessa lögner? Varför upphävde de plötsligt alla journalistiska regler om att varje artikel skall kunna verifieras av åtminstone 2 och helst 3 sinsemellan fristående källor? Allt som hade behövts var en enda kritisk röst. Och denna okritiska inställning fortsatte till alldeles nyligen. Det var på något sätt en psykos som grep hela den amerikanska pressen.