 |
|
This CJR piece by my admired friend Eric Umansky seems to suffer a bit from the editorial equivalent of fighting the last war. I don't think it sufficiently captures the skepticism and somewhat constraining role the press has brought to bear on the administration at key points on its Iran narrative. One example: I would say that the press played a big role in pushing back with skepticism to the point of impasse on the administration's efforts to roll out a campaign a year ago that Iran was the main destabilizing force in Iraq. Press barely let the administration get its powerpoint presentation out - it was delayed at a couple points -- and was all over it with skepticism with the notable exception of the NYT's Michael Gordon, who eventually said he was getting his information from the military. Press has consistently relayed IAEA and intelligence community ambivalence and uncertainty on Iran's nuclear program and intentions going back long before the NIE (the AP's George Jahn at the IAEA in Vienna comes to mind). The WP's Dafna Linzer has been stand out in appropriately questioning and investigating US claims on the intelligence, including the nuclear laptop. Press has relayed skepticism on the theory Iran is ripe for regime change in heaps (LAT's Borzou Daragahi, USA Today's Barbara Slavin, the WP guy who was there), and conveyed ample skepticism too about the benefits for Iranian rights activists actually living in Iran of the administration's declared efforts to fund pro democracy efforts on Iran (Wright's coverage of Hala Esfandiari's ordeal, just one instance, Laura Secor in the New Yorker and New Republic). It's reported the narrative of a fight between factions within the administration in heaps (NYT's Helene Cooper, WP's Wright, me), and I would say hardly suppressed portrayal of administration moderates at the State Department as the perceived saner ones. Is there any major press outlet which didn't portray Fallon as something of a hero? If anything, the US press underreports the human rights situation in Iran.
I mean, what would the public have to conclude about Iran from reporting to date: That it's working on a nuclear program that Iran says is peaceful and lots of people outside are skeptical is peaceful, that there is lots of uncertainty about the intelligence, that Ahmadinejad is a dangerous guy who sponsors Holocaust denial conferences, that much of the US government and public don't want a war, we're kind of busy in Iraq, and there are lots of people who think we should try harder on the diplomatic front and who favor trying to talk with Iran. To be fair to Eric, it's probably true that the public is inclined to think that Iran's nuclear program is probably not ultimately for peaceful purposes, and perhaps the press is responsible for sharing and conveying that overall bias, although I do think there has been more skepticism on administration claims and more conveyance of the uncertainty of the intelligence. And I think the piece misses important contextual differences in the reporting. The press has been almost and perhaps at earlier points rightly paranoid that the administration is planning to strike and had a hard time trusting the voices inside the government that have for a while been saying no. (Witness this Post headline today). Hardly selling a war. On the contrary.
Update: The Onion is sympathetic to CJR's take: "U.S. Not Planning to Attack Iran, Says U.S. Iran War Czar."
Update II: Upon more thought, what I think CJR gets wrong here is a big thing, a central framing thing: the press has questioned the fundamental precepts of Washington Iran policy in a fairly aggressive way (see Michael Hirsh's stuff at Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria, David Ignatius, Wright, Ricks, Cooper, Slavin), and in particular the hardliners' proposed solutions on an uncertain diagnosis -- regime change or military confrontation -- as unrealistic, premature and unnecessary at this point. All the reporters who have reported from there have questioned hard what Washington thinks it knows about Iran, and challenged many of the fictions and fantasies of a city that hasn't had an embassy in Iran for thirty years. Those are big things. And it has not ignored the ambiguities of the diagnosis. Press is not selling this war.
After he completes a move, Eric plans to respond to some of these points.
Monday March 17 2008 Update: Eric Umansky sends this in response:
This is Eric Umansky. I wrote a piece in the latest Columbia Journalism Review critiquing coverage of the nuclear tensions with Iran. Laura thinks that my criticisms were, basically, from Mars. (As she concluded, my story was “the editorial equivalent of fighting the last war.”) Laura has kindly allowed me to offer some follow-up thoughts and respond to her post.
Let me start off by agreeing with Laura: There has been plenty of good, aggressive reporting about Iran. I cite some examples in my piece. The Los Angeles Times has also had some fabulous coverage. One of the most revealing stories I’ve read about Iran was by the LAT’s Borzou Daragahi and about just how fractured power is in Iran. Meanwhile, Dafna Linzer and her (now former) colleagues at the Post have, I think, excelled in covering the nuclear tensions with Iran. I highlighted a few of their pieces in my story, but they really do deserve more of a shout-out.
I also don’t think the press jumped on board any march to war. In fact, I don’t think there was ever much of a march to begin with. I’ve never thought the administration was likely to attack Iran. And there has certainly been plenty of coverage about the potential costs of any attack.
None of that was the focus of my piece. My jumping off point was last December’s National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran had stopped the weaponization-only part of its nuclear program. (As I noted in my story, Iran is still enriching uranium, which can be used for civilian programs but is also the biggest hurdle for nukes.) What I was looking at is whether the NIE’s conclusions should have been such a stunner.
Obviously, the NIE went against the administration’s portrayal, and that’s certainly worthy of headlines. But I think the NIE was also such a surprise because it went against deeper assumptions held by many in the U.S. (including myself). It wasn’t just administration boosters, for instance, who thought that Iran’s leaders were committed to eventually getting nukes.
What I pointed out was evidence that undercut some of those assumptions. For example—and what I spent much of my piece on—was the apparent peace feelers Iranian leaders made in 2002-2003 and culminating in a peace offer in which they (exactly who, in fairness, has always been a question) put nearly everything on the table, including Iran’s nuclear program. As I wrote, the Financial Times, Washington Post, and Newsday all did fine reporting on the so-called “grand bargain” offer. But as I also noted, the apparent peace feelers got little pick-up overall. Indeed, I don’t believe the New York Times ever devoted a news story to it.
In short, what I tried to show is not that the press went along for any ride but rather that particularly before the NIE there were a series of more broadly held assumptions about Iran—again, and most importantly, that leaders definitely wanted nukes, and also about why it might want them—that often went unexplored. Readers can judge for themselves whether the case I made was convincing.