[UPDATE: Again Glenn Greenwald says it nicely:
What evidence is there that the Iranians reported this facility to the IAEA only because they learned that the U.S. had discovered the facility? For that matter, what evidence is there that the Iranians ever realized this at all? Whether Iran reported the facility voluntarily or only because they were forced to do so by virtue of having been "caught" is a self-evidently relevant fact to all of this, and yet the claims of anonymous officials on this question are uncritically assumed to be true without any skepticism, demands for evidence, or consideration of alternative views....
Provocative, unproven claims -- ones that will obviously inflame war passions among a significant segment of the population -- are passed on with no evidence and little questioning. Dissenting voices are excluded (other than a fleeting, token quote from the Iranian President buried in the middle). And overnight, an extremely fear-inciting and sensationalistic case against Iran was cemented as unchallengeable wisdom across the political spectrum. ]
A reader brought to my attention: Columbia Journalism Review has an article entitled "Eyes wide shut on Iran" on the media's coverage of the news of a second, unbuilt uranium enrichment plant in Iran. It shows that the NY Times relies almost exclusively on anonymous government sources for its Iran-related bashing, just as it did in the build-up to the Iraq war, as FAIR pointed out 2 years ago.
This quote from the CJR article was too funny to pass up:
On Saturday, The New York Times offered on its front page a long, behind-the-scenes reconstruction of what it called “three dramatic days of highly sensitive diplomacy and political maneuvering” that the Obama administration had conducted after it learned of the letter that Iran had sent to the International Atomic Energy Agency describing the new nuclear plant. The story, we were informed, was “based on interviews with administration officials and American allies, all of whom want the story known to help support their case against Iraq.” No allies were cited, however. Instead, the article relied entirely on anonymous US officials. Here’s my attribution tally:
a senior administration official
a second senior administration official
administration officials
senior intelligence officials
the officials
the official
White House officials
American officials
a senior administration official
the officials
a senior official
American officials
the officials
a senior administration official
the administration official
a senior administration official
administration officials
one administration official
senior administration officialI wondered how many officials this actually added up to.
Read more from the Columbia Journalism Review here.
Meanwhile, remember what FAIR said about the NY Times' penchant for using anonymous government sources:
The similarity between the current New York Times reporting hyping an Iran threat and the paper's credulous prewar Iraq reporting are not coincidental. Gordon was co-author, along with disgraced reporter Judith Miller, of two of six stories singled out in the paper's May 26, 2004 apology for faulty Iraq reporting, including the Times story that falsely touted the now-famous "aluminum tubes" as components of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program.
The paper's mea culpa, in the form of an editors' note, explained some of the editorial shortcomings that resulted in publishing misleading and embarrassing reports: “Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper.... Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried." Where are the editors who should be "pressing for more skepticism" this time around?
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