This is going to be a regular feature on my site -- Today's Liars. Here, I plan on highlighting the most egregious examples of poor journalism that I run across - so poor, in fact, that it can't merely be attributable to simple incompetence. As sort of a celebatory kick-start, I'm going to start out with TWO lying liars: Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian, and David E Sanger of the New York Times.
Today, Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian plays dumb when he writes:
the Iranians claim that all this [nuclear] work is merely in pursuit of civilian nuclear power. But it's hard to believe that a country drowning in oil is running short of energy.
Jonathan, had you bothered to do a basic search for background info on the subject of Iran's nuclear energy needs, would would have seen that according to Reuters, your own government in the UK agrees that Iran has a perfectly legitimate case for nuclear power despite "drowning in oil":
"Iran's argument that despite vast oil and gas reserves it needs nuclear power to meet booming energy demand holds more water than U.S. officials give credit...The Foreign Affairs Select Committee of Britain's parliament said last March that based on a study it commissioned: 'It is clear ... that the arguments as to whether Iran has a genuine requirement for domestically produced nuclear electricity are not all, or even predominantly, on one side.' " Iran's arguments for nuclear power make some sense. " By Paul Hughes, Reuters, March 2 2005
You would have also seen that the US government, including some officials who are now serving under Bush, encouraged and supported Iran's nuclear program precisely because it made economic sense, as reported by the Washington Post:
"Lacking direct evidence, Bush administration officials argue that Iran's nuclear program must be a cover for bomb-making...Yet Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and outgoing Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz held key national security posts when the Ford administration made the opposite argument 30 years ago."Past Arguments Don't Square With Current Iran Policy" By Dafna Linzer Washington Post, Sunday, March 27, 2005.
But apparently, Jonathan, you somehow not only managed to avoid seeing the Washington Post or Reuters, you also didn't bother to check any other source which would have told you that Iran has a perfectly legitimate economic case for having nuclear power. Apparently, you didn't even bother to run basic Google search, or else you would have come across Forced to Fuel by Muhammad Sahim in the Harvard International Review Volume 26, Issue 4, and The fuel behind Iran's nuclear drive, by David Isenberg in Asia Times Aug 24, 2005, at the very least.
But you couldn't be bothered with any research before you yapped about Iran's energy needs, now could you, Jonathan?
And you, David E. Sanger! I would have expected more of the New York Times . . . I don't know why, considering Judith Miller thing. . . but still, surely you could meet the basic obligations of a reporter by actually checking on a story fed to you by anonymous sources before breathlessly repeating it. Instead, you wrote about Iranian President Ahmadinejad's reference to the P-2 centrifuge to give credence to the US claims that Iran had been conducting 'secret' nuclear experiments with it:
Iran long denied that it was doing anything with the technology, until Mr. Ahmadinejad declared 10 days ago that the country was "presently conducting research" on the P-2, which he said could increase fourfold the amount of uranium the country is able to enrich. Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement took the inspectors and American officials by surprise. But they seized on his boasts about Iran's programs to press the question of whether the country has a separate set of nuclear facilities, apart from the giant enrichment center at Natanz, that it has not previously revealed.
But had you actually bothered to check the history of the P-2 centrifuge program in Iran, you would have noticed that Iran had already informed the IAEA of the work on the P-2 centrifuge. In fact, Jeffrey Lewis (of Armscontrolwonk.com) posted this on the topic:
"Iran notified the IAEA that it planned eventual resumption of research on the P2 centrifuge design in its so-called Additional Protocol Declaration. The declaration is not available to the public, but IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei noted in one of his reports to the IAEA Board of Governors that 'in its Additional Protocol declarations, Iran has foreseen P-2 R&D activities for the future.' ... Iranian officials have mentioned that Iran has an ongoing R&D effort on the P2. Former top nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani, in a speech published by an Iranian journal, told the audience "As for the P2, we are doing some research; we are doing things at the research level" -- a speech that was reported on by ... the New York Times."
Yes, David E. Sanger - your own paper had previously reported on Iran's P-2 program, the same program you casually refer to as a 'secret'.
Sheesh!
Comments