Going It Alone ......very interesting..

Going It Alone
Accolades now come to Knight Ridder for its prescient reports expressing skepticism about claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.



By Steve Ritea
Ritea is a reporter for New Orleans' Times-Picayune

When the New York Times apologized to readers May 26 for not being "more aggressive" in examining the administration's decision to invade Iraq, editors couldn't help but give a nod to a less-vaunted news organization that had been beating the Times on the story for some time: Knight Ridder's Washington bureau.

The contrast in coverage was stark at times. On September 8, 2002, the Times proclaimed in a front-page headline, "U.S. Says Hussein Intensified Quest for A-Bomb Parts." Knight Ridder had two days earlier proclaimed, "Lack of hard evidence of Iraqi weapons worries top U.S. officials." Knight Ridder continued with headlines like "Troubling questions over justification for war in Iraq" and "Failure to find weapons in Iraq leads to intelligence scrutiny," even as most other major media outlets sang a tune more in line with the Bush administration.


It wasn't until February that Michael Massing bestowed some of the first accolades on Knight Ridder, writing in The New York Review of Books: "Almost alone among national news organizations, Knight Ridder had decided to take a hard look at the administration's justifications for war."


A few weeks earlier, Knight Ridder Washington reporters Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay received the Raymond Clapper Memorial award from the Senate Press Gallery for their coverage of the sketchy intelligence used to justify war with Iraq.


For about a year-and-a-half, the pair had filed compelling stories on the issue and, on many occasions, it seemed like they were banging the drum alone. It wasn't until earlier this year, when it became increasingly apparent Hussein had not been stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, that other news outlets grew more critical of the administration.


more....

http://www.ajr.org/article_printable.asp?id=3725

The undertow here: a collaborationist press.

"As the pressure built on the administration and their case got shakier and shakier, there was obviously a lot greater stress, and there was some shouting that was done at us over the telephone," Hoyt says. Some of those calls came from well-known names in high places, Bureau Chief John Walcott adds, declining to drop any names.

Around that time, the White House turned up the pressure, Strobel says, and "tried to freeze us out of briefings."

Landay adds: "I think this administration may have a fairly punitive policy when it comes to journalists who get in their face. And if you talk to some White House reporters, there is a fear of losing access." He says that fear may have played into the relatively uncritical approach of news organizations like the Times.


And the bottom line:

"I think the failure of the media in general in covering this story," Landay says, "is as egregious as the intelligence failure."