In Umm Qasr, sand-logged Humvees, tanks and artillery pieces, their work done for now, were hauled onto waiting ships. Across the Gulf in Qatar, encampments of makeshift press studios were disassembled and packed away like so many Bedouin tents, as battalions of reporters, photographers and engineers most, until recently, virgins in the art of war correspondence sank into their aeroplane seats with the satisfied weariness of veterans. A few of the journalists were no doubt trying to figure out how to get past US customs with their newly plundered swag, but most could only chomp their pretzels and wonder, “what next?” Back in New York and Atlanta, their bosses were wondering exactly the same thing.
After a month of 24/7 action, television networks and newspapers alike were once again facing the prospect of open-ended news meetings the kind where the day’s lead story is decided only after the doughnuts have disappeared. Gone were the fat wartime supplements from The New York Times and The Washington Post; gone too, the networks’ riveting battlefield visuals and star-spangled captions, to be replaced by what, exactly?
If an Iraqi protester is shot in Fallujah and no embeds are there to film it, does it still make a lead story? No? So what does? Quickly, we’re running out of doughnuts.
The Laci Peterson saga? Philandering husband murdered pregnant, all-American wife Or Did He? Well, it’s hardly O.J. Simpson.
How about Canada’s spat with the World Health Organisation over Toronto’s embarrassing little SARS problem? While many here might see it as karmic justice for the 51st State’s treacherous opposition to the war, it’s still your garden-variety Chinese chicken virus.
Sure, from a media perspective, there was plenty of scope for post-war retrospectives, like whether Fox News or al-Jazeera had emerged as the conflict’s biggest winners or which of the two was more blatantly partisan. Short of venturing an opinion, I’ll wager that the answer to both questions is the same.
Then there was BBC Director-General Greg Dyke’s reproach of overly patriotic war coverage in the US, quickly countered by a volley of tirades in the American tabloids accusing the BBC of taking a ‘pro-Saddam’ stance. The same tabloids left no gloat unturned after their left-leaning counterparts’ predictions of a protracted war proved less accurate than an Enron earnings forecast. Indeed, the word ‘quagmire’ has become virtual shorthand in the tabloid press here for ‘wrong-headed-liberal-doomsayer-speak.’
There was, of course, still a good deal of page-two speculation about who would surface as Iraq’s Hamid Karzai. The Onion, a satirical freesheet, even suggested an Idols-format reality TV show to decide on the most promising candidate Who Wants to Rule Iraq?Other than that, it was business as usual. The war was over.
But there was something acutely disturbing about the sudden abundance on American newsstands of singing fat ladies.
Though the artillery may have fallen silent, this was no time for the media to follow suit. After all, the swift coalition victory raised more questions than it answered. Here’s one: where are Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction?
Was this not, after all, the very pretext for the conflict, the question upon which such an esteemed personage as Secretary of State Colin Powell so recently staked his reputation? At the time of writing, Saddam’s toxic arsenal was nowhere in evidence. Surely, then, the American press should have been beating down the doors of the White House, State Department and Pentagon, demanding an explanation. Alas, what we saw instead were vague rumours that Saddam had shipped the stuff over to Syria, or destroyed it before the war both unconvincing accounts, given that the alleged weapons represented the tyrant’s best hope of stalling a superior invading force.
Far be it from this humble media columnist to deny the veracity of those charts Powell famously flaunted before the Security Council there is certainly no evidence to suggest that his conclusions were wrong but surely any journalist worthy of the name should proceed on the basis that, until substantiated, intelligence emanating from interested parties should be regarded as inherently suspect.
Sadly, a recent front-page article in the New York Times suggested that, on this particular subject at least, healthy scepticism was not the order of the day. The piece in question, by seasoned reporter and chemical weapons authority Judith Miller, asserted that an Iraqi scientist, who claimed to have worked on Saddam’s chemical weapons programme, led US military officials to a buried cache of materials that formed the “building blocks of illegal weapons.” Miller cited the source’s claims as “the most important discovery to date in the hunt for illegal weapons.”
She went on to alert readers to the “terms of her accreditation to report,” as specified by Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha, the US military unit searching for illegal weapons in Iraq. Under these terms, she was not allowed to name or interview the scientist. Moreover, she agreed to submit the article to military officials prior to publication, whereupon the officials requested that she refrain from naming the unearthed chemicals.
There is nothing wrong with protecting sources. Indeed, good journalism depends on it. But when journalists from ‘the paper of record’ agree to submit their pre-publication copy to the very establishments they are investigating, the results are unlikely to fall into the category of journalism at all. In fact, given the restrictions under which Miller agreed to operate, the real source in her story is not really the unnamed Iraqi scientist, but rather the Pentagon itself. And in the wake of its recent walkover in Iraq, it is worth asking how much protection the US military needs.
Tim Spira is The Media’s correspondent in New York.