Washington, DC's alternative news source,
Washington City Paper takes on
Fred Hiatt today over WaPo's Sunday
editorial defending BushCo leaks, but the lesson from it is entirely applicable to
today's WaPo editorial on Iran.
That lesson? Fred Hiatt is an administration shill, refusing to take accountability for his editorial page's role in spreading BushCo's misinformation leading into the Iraq War.
[C]ritics slammed the Post for applauding an administration bent on covering its ass by planting selective and misleading information with reporters. To which Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt responds, in essence: That's journalism.
"I would say a lot of people will look back at this period and think it's strange that we in the press got ourselves in the position of arguing that government leaks are a bad thing," says Hiatt, pointing out that a news piece in the same day's Post on Iran's nuclear weapons program was based on leaks. "If we're going to start saying we don't want them, OK, let's go into a different business."
Which is all well and good if those leaks are taken within context--if the White House is leaking something to you, you'd better try to figure out what the White House is trying to get from it. Good reporting requires looking that gift horse in the mouth. At least the news division at WaPo seems to understand that, whereas Hiatt's vision of leaks is more like stenography, making this pronouncement incredibly hypocritical:
"I think reporters always have a responsibility to try and give readers as much as they can on the context for leaks and motivations of leakers," says Hiatt.
So why do reporters have such a greater responsibility to readers than editorialists, Fred? And what accountability does an editorial page have when it's been proven wrong?
The Post's editorialists bought the White House line in full, yet they haven't gone the mea culpa route. They flirted with accountability in an October 2003 editorial, which reads in part: "Were we wrong? The honest answer is: We don't yet know."
Well, that was two and a half years ago. Do we know enough now to admit the mistake? When asked that question, Hiatt responded, "I'm not getting into that subject...I guess what we have to say about that I would say in an editorial."
Seems like now would be a good time to revisit that subject, now that the administration is beating the war drum once again, and the editorial board is chiming in with words of wisdom like this:
Some in Washington cite a U.S. intelligence estimate that an Iranian bomb is 10 years away. In fact the low end of that same estimate is five years, and some independent experts say three. Iran has announced plans to install 3,000 centrifuges at its plant in Natanz by the end of 2006; according to former nuclear weapons inspector David Albright, that many working centrifuges could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in less than a year.
(H/T to Greg Sargent.)