Moyers probe of press and Iraq coming

[Lanya]

'Devastating' Moyers Probe of Press and Iraq Coming


By Greg Mitchell

Published: April 19, 2007 9:00 PM ET

NEW YORK The most powerful indictment of the news media for falling down in its duties in the run-up to the war in Iraq will appear next Wednesday, a 90-minute PBS broadcast called “Buying the War,” which marks the return of “Bill Moyers Journal.” E&P was sent a preview DVD and a draft transcript for the program this week.

While much of the evidence of the media’s role as cheerleaders for the war presented here is not new, it is skillfully assembled, with many fresh quotes from interviews (with the likes of Tim Russert and Walter Pincus) along with numerous embarrassing examples of past statements by journalists and pundits that proved grossly misleading or wrong. Several prominent media figures, prodded by Moyers, admit the media failed miserably, though few take personal responsibility.

The war continues today, now in its fifth year, with the death toll for Americans and Iraqis rising again -- yet Moyers points out, “the press has yet to come to terms with its role in enabling the Bush Administration to go to war on false pretenses.”

Among the few heroes of the film are reporters with the Knight Ridder/McClatchy bureau in D.C. Tragically late, Walter Isaacson, who headed CNN, observes, “The people at Knight Ridder were calling the colonels and the lieutenants and the people in the CIA and finding out, you know, that the intelligence is not very good. We should’ve all been doing that.”

At the close, Moyers mentions some of the chief proponents of the war who refused to speak to him for this program, including Thomas Friedman, Bill Kristol, Roger Ailes, Charles Krauthammer, Judith Miller, and William Safire.

But Dan Rather, the former CBS anchor, admits, “I don’t think there is any excuse for, you know, my performance and the performance of the press in general in the roll up to the war…We didn’t dig enough. And we shouldn’t have been fooled in this way.” Bob Simon, who had strong doubts about evidence for war, was asked by Moyers if he pushed any of the top brass at CBS to “dig deeper,” and he replies, “No, in all honesty, with a thousand mea culpas….nope, I don’t think we followed up on this.”

Instead he covered the marketing of the war in a “softer” way, explaining to Moyers: “I think we all felt from the beginning that to deal with a subject as explosive as this, we should keep it, in a way, almost light – if that doesn’t seem ridiculous.”

Moyers replies: “Going to war, almost light.”

Walter Isaacson is pushed hard by Moyers and finally admits, “We didn’t question our sources enough.” But why? Isaacson notes there was “almost a patriotism police” after 9/11 and when the network showed civilian casualties it would get phone calls from advertisers and the administration and “big people in corporations were calling up and saying, ‘You’re being anti-American here.’”

Moyers then mentions that Isaacson had sent a memo to staff, leaked to the Washington Post, in which he declared, “It seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan” and ordered them to balance any such images with reminders of 9/11. Moyers also asserts that editors at the Panama City (Fla.) News-Herald received an order from above, “Do not use photos on Page 1A showing civilian casualties. Our sister paper has done so and received hundreds and hundreds of threatening emails.”

Walter Pincus of the Washington Post explains that even at his paper reporters “do worry about sort of getting out ahead of something.” But Moyers gives credit to
Charles J. Hanley of The Associated Press for trying, in vain, to draw more attention to United Nations inspectors failing to find WMD in early 2003.

The disgraceful press reaction to Colin Powell’s presentation at the United Nations seems like something out of Monty Python, with one key British report cited by Powell being nothing more than a student’s thesis, downloaded from the Web – with the student later threatening to charge U.S. officials with “plagiarism.”

Phil Donahue recalls that he was told he could not feature war dissenters alone on his MSNBC talk show and always had to have “two conservatives for every liberal.” Moyers resurrects a leaked NBC memo about Donahue’s firing that claimed he “presents a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war. At the same time our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.”

Moyers also throws some stats around: In the year before the invasion William Safire (who predicted a “quick war” with Iraqis cheering their liberators) wrote “a total of 27 opinion pieces fanning the sparks of war.” The Washington Post carried at least 140 front-page stories in that same period making the administration’s case for attack. In the six months leading to the invasion the Post would “editorialize in favor of the war at least 27 times.”

Of the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on NBC, ABC and CBS nightly news in the six months before the war, almost all could be traced back to sources solely in the White House, Pentagon or State Dept., Moyers tells Russert, who offers no coherent reply.

The program closes on a sad note, with Moyers pointing out that “so many of the advocates and apologists for the war are still flourishing in the media.” He then runs a pre-war clip of President Bush declaring, “We cannot wait for the final proof: the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” Then he explains: “The man who came up with it was Michael Gerson, President Bush’s top speechwriter.

“He has left the White House and has been hired by the Washington Post as a columnist.”


Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is editor.

   http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003574260

[Plane]

What elese would Moyers find?

[Mucho]

What elese would Moyers find?

Moyers finds the truth unlike you RW delusionals.

[BT]

Moyers finds the truth unlike you RW delusionals.

Moyers helped LBJ sell the Viet Nam war.

[sirs]

Moyers finds the truth unlike you RW delusionals.

Moyers helped LBJ sell the Viet Nam war.

I think there was a "D" following that President's name, so it's ok

[Mucho]

Moyers finds the truth unlike you RW delusionals.

Moyers helped LBJ sell the Viet Nam war.

But Moyers learned from his mistake . Your blind moron Pres could never do that.

I said he learned from his mistake.

Bill Moyers on the Costs of War

   
         
   

   


Iraq is not Vietnam, but war is war. Some of you will recall that I was Press Secretary to Lyndon Johnson during the escalation of war in Vietnam. Like the White House today, we didn't talk very much about what the war would cost. Not in the beginning. We weren't sure, and we didn't really want to know too soon, anyway.      
   
   
Bill Moyers
on the Costs of War

If we had to tell Congress and the public the true cost of the war, we were afraid of what it would do to the rest of the budget — the money for education, poverty, Medicare. In time, we had to figure it out and come clean. It wasn't the price tag that hurt as much as it was the body bag. The dead were coming back in such numbers that LBJ began to grow morose, and sometimes took to bed with the covers pulled above his eyes, as if he could avoid the ghosts of young men marching around in his head. I thought of this the other day, when President Bush spoke of the loss of American lives in Iraq. He said, "I'm the one who will have to look the mothers in the eye."

LBJ said almost the same thing. No president can help but think of the mothers, widows, and orphans.

Mr. Bush is amassing a mighty American armada in the Middle East - incredible firepower. He has to know that even a clean war — a war fought with laser beams, long range missiles, high flying bombers, and remote controls — can get down and dirty, especially for the other side.

We forget there are mothers on the other side. I've often wondered about the mothers of Vietnamese children like this one, burned by American napalm. Or Afghan mothers, whose children were smashed and broken by American bombs.

On the NBC Nightly News one evening I saw this exclusive report from Afghanistan — those little white lights are heat images of people on foot. They're about to be attacked.

That fellow running out in the open - were he and the people killed members of Al Qaeda, or just coming to worship?

We'll never know. But surely their mothers do. And there will be mothers like them in Iraq. Saddam won't mind - dead or alive; and we won't mind, either. The spoils of victory include amnesia.

Ah, the glories of war; the adrenaline that flows to men behind desks at the very thought of the armies that will march, the missiles that will fly, the ships that will sail, on their command. Our Secretary of Defense has a plaque on his desk that says, "Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords." I don't think so.

To launch an armada against Hussein's own hostages, a people who have not fired a shot at us in anger, seems a crude and poor alternative to shrewd, disciplined diplomacy.

Don't get me wrong. Vietnam didn't make me a dove; it made me read the Constitution. That's all. Government's first obligation is to defend its citizens. There's nothing in the Constitution that says it's permissible for a great nation to go hunting for Hussein by killing the people he holds hostage, his own people, who have no choice in the matter, who have done us no harm.

Unprovoked, the noble sport of war becomes the murder of the innocent.

There is really no need for him  to apologize as it was not his doing. He was just a mouthpiece like Tony the SnowColon.
Moyers has made amends in many ways for his lack of perception as a young man.

[Mucho]

Moyers finds the truth unlike you RW delusionals.

Moyers helped LBJ sell the Viet Nam war.

I think there was a "D" following that President's name, so it's ok

Actually, I hated Johnson then almost as much as I hate Bush now. So your long strike out streak on realty is  intact.

[BT]

http://www.pbs.org/now/commentary/moyers14.htm

Link doesn't work.

Did Moyers apologize?

Did all concerned accept?

Apologies aren't what they once were, either in the giving of or the acceptance.

[Mucho]

http://www.pbs.org/now/commentary/moyers14.htm

Link doesn't work.

Did Moyers apologize?

Did all concerned accept?

Apologies aren't what they once were, either in the giving of or the acceptance.

I said he learned from his mistake.

Bill Moyers on the Costs of War

   
         
   

   


Iraq is not Vietnam, but war is war. Some of you will recall that I was Press Secretary to Lyndon Johnson during the escalation of war in Vietnam. Like the White House today, we didn't talk very much about what the war would cost. Not in the beginning. We weren't sure, and we didn't really want to know too soon, anyway.     
   
   
Bill Moyers
on the Costs of War

If we had to tell Congress and the public the true cost of the war, we were afraid of what it would do to the rest of the budget — the money for education, poverty, Medicare. In time, we had to figure it out and come clean. It wasn't the price tag that hurt as much as it was the body bag. The dead were coming back in such numbers that LBJ began to grow morose, and sometimes took to bed with the covers pulled above his eyes, as if he could avoid the ghosts of young men marching around in his head. I thought of this the other day, when President Bush spoke of the loss of American lives in Iraq. He said, "I'm the one who will have to look the mothers in the eye."

LBJ said almost the same thing. No president can help but think of the mothers, widows, and orphans.

Mr. Bush is amassing a mighty American armada in the Middle East - incredible firepower. He has to know that even a clean war — a war fought with laser beams, long range missiles, high flying bombers, and remote controls — can get down and dirty, especially for the other side.

We forget there are mothers on the other side. I've often wondered about the mothers of Vietnamese children like this one, burned by American napalm. Or Afghan mothers, whose children were smashed and broken by American bombs.

On the NBC Nightly News one evening I saw this exclusive report from Afghanistan — those little white lights are heat images of people on foot. They're about to be attacked.

That fellow running out in the open - were he and the people killed members of Al Qaeda, or just coming to worship?

We'll never know. But surely their mothers do. And there will be mothers like them in Iraq. Saddam won't mind - dead or alive; and we won't mind, either. The spoils of victory include amnesia.

Ah, the glories of war; the adrenaline that flows to men behind desks at the very thought of the armies that will march, the missiles that will fly, the ships that will sail, on their command. Our Secretary of Defense has a plaque on his desk that says, "Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords." I don't think so.

To launch an armada against Hussein's own hostages, a people who have not fired a shot at us in anger, seems a crude and poor alternative to shrewd, disciplined diplomacy.

Don't get me wrong. Vietnam didn't make me a dove; it made me read the Constitution. That's all. Government's first obligation is to defend its citizens. There's nothing in the Constitution that says it's permissible for a great nation to go hunting for Hussein by killing the people he holds hostage, his own people, who have no choice in the matter, who have done us no harm.

Unprovoked, the noble sport of war becomes the murder of the innocent.

There is really no need for him  to apologize as it was not his doing. He was just a mouthpiece like Tony the SnowColon.
Moyers has made amends in many ways for his lack of perception as a young man.

[BT]

I don't believe i said he was the guiding force behind the VN war. I said he helped sell it. And as the mouthpiece for LBJ he was in a position to do so.

Guess he was just following orders.

[Mucho]

I don't believe i said he was the guiding force behind the VN war. I said he helped sell it. And as the mouthpiece for LBJ he was in a position to do so.

Guess he was just following orders.

So what? You admire that in your lackeys. It must assuage your guilty conscience to believe we are as bad as you fascists.

[BT]

So what? You admire that in your lackeys. It must assuage your guilty conscience to believe we are as bad as you fascists.

Not at all. I just don't see the same halo on St. Bill that you do.

We are all human. Our beliefs evolve. And i can see how he might look differently at war now than he did then.

Having said that, even after having served penance all these years on PBS, what gives him the gravitas to point fingers at others for doing the same thing he did a generation ago.

[Mucho]

So what? You admire that in your lackeys. It must assuage your guilty conscience to believe we are as bad as you fascists.

Not at all. I just don't see the same halo on St. Bill that you do.

We are all human. Our beliefs evolve. And i can see how he might look differently at war now than he did then.

Having said that, even after having served penance all these years on PBS, what gives him the gravitas to point fingers at others for doing the same thing he did a generation ago.

Because he was there  did that and learned from his mistakes is exactly what gives him the gravitas my shallow friend.

[BT]

Because he was there  did that and learned from his mistakes is exactly what gives him the gravitas my shallow friend.

So ? Those that followed should not be given the same opportunity for reflection  that St. Bill had?

What makes him so special?

[Mucho]

Because he was there  did that and learned from his mistakes is exactly what gives him the gravitas my shallow friend.

So ? Those that followed should not be given the same opportunity for reflection  that St. Bill had?

What makes him so special?

He is special because he learned from his mistake. You guys will never do that and repeat the same mistakes over & over due to your stubborn stupidity.