{"id":1522,"date":"2004-03-04T16:25:07","date_gmt":"2004-03-04T21:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/000af36.netsolhost.com\/wordpress1\/2004\/03\/04\/if_we_knew_then\/"},"modified":"2004-03-04T16:25:07","modified_gmt":"2004-03-04T21:25:07","slug":"if_we_knew_then","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/2004\/03\/04\/if_we_knew_then\/","title":{"rendered":"If We Knew Then\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In freelancer Chris Mooney\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/cjr.org\/issues\/2004\/2\/mooney-war.asp\">6,000+-word article<\/a> in the current Columbia Journalism Review, six leading U.S. newspapers come under scrutiny for the gullibility of their editorial pages in the run-up to the Iraqi war.  While two of  the newspapers opposed the war, writes Mooney, \u201cIf these papers had a major shortcoming, it was, instead, something they shared with the prowar pages to a much greater extent: a passive willingness to write about the Iraq debate on the president\u2019s own terms.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Later, Mooney writes, <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Why did the papers trust and defer? For most of them, notes Todd Gitlin, a Columbia journalism professor, \u201cthe default position seems to have been that the administration was well meaning \u2014 and that there was a tight logical connection between admirable purpose and clear fact.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\nOf the six papers \u2013 New York Times, Wall Street Journal, L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune, USA Today and The Washington Post \u2013 The Post comes off as most introspective of its editorial stances.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[Editorial Page Editor Fred] Hiatt says he wishes the Post had not accepted the WMD claims during the days before war: \u201cIf you look at the editorials we write running up, we state as flat fact that he has stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. If that\u2019s not true, it would have been better not to say it.\u201d But Hiatt adds that he doesn\u2019t feel hung out to dry by the administration \u2014 at least not yet. \u201cIf it turned out that Powell had deliberately lied to me, I would feel suckered,\u201d he says<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In freelancer Chris Mooney\u2019s 6,000+-word article in the current Columbia Journalism Review, six leading U.S. newspapers come under scrutiny for the gullibility of their editorial pages in the run-up to the Iraqi war. While two of the newspapers opposed the war, writes Mooney, \u201cIf these papers had a major shortcoming, it was, instead, something they&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/2004\/03\/04\/if_we_knew_then\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1522"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}