At Consortiumnews.com in 2002-2003, we ran a number of stories questioning Bush's WMD claims and his other arguments for war -- and even though we were only an Internet site, I got angry e-mails every time the U.S. invading forces found a 55-gallon drum of chemicals. The e-mails demanded that I admit I was wrong and telling me that I owed Bush an apology. [For details on the wartime reporting, see Neck Deep.]
When I would read those comments, I would flash back to the stomach-turning angst that I felt as a correspondent for AP and Newsweek when I published a story that I knew would open me for a new round of attacks. At those moments, all I had was confidence in my tradecraft, the belief that I had followed the rules of journalism in carefully assessing and presenting the evidence.
Still, there is no certainty in journalism. Even the most careful reporting can contain imprecision or errors. But that imperfection becomes a major problem when the rewards and punishments are skewed too widely, when the slightest problem on one side leads to loss of your livelihood while gross mistakes on the other carry no punishment at all.
That was the core failure of the U.S. news media on the Iraq War. By 2002-2003, a generation or more of American journalists had absorbed this career reality. There was grave danger to question Bush's claims while there was little risk in going with the flow.
And, if you made that assessment a decade ago, you were right. Even though you were wrong journalistically in promoting or staying silent on Bush's assertions about Iraq's WMD, you almost surely continued your career climb. If questioned about why you got the WMD question wrong, you could simply say that "everyone got it wrong" -- or at least everyone who mattered -- so it would be unfair to single anyone out for blame.
But most likely, no one who mattered would even ask the question because those folks had been traveling in the same pack, spouting the same groupthink. So, if it seems odd to some Americans that today they are reading and watching the same pundits who misled them into a catastrophic war a decade ago, it shouldn't.
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