Three things converged on me yesterday
- an opinion piece in my local paper
- Daniel Schorr’s commentary on NPR
- the report that the US has given up looking for weapons of mass destruction.
With those three things in front of me, I realized print and radio would rather focus on the misfortunes of CBS publishing false documents than on their complicity in publishing false documents about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. All media outlets love a war. There’s a certain adrenaline rush to covering exciting international news. The same way meteorologists like to use the term “perfect storm” when a horribly destructive atomospheric disturbances comes about. There have been very few independent investigations about newspapers’ reporting on weapons of mass destruction similar to the report CBS commisioned and resulted in firing of employees. Perhaps radio and print need to do a little self-examination.
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