Tom Brokaw’s Disturbing Defense of the Media and Iraq

 

By Greg Mitchell~Editor & Publisher

In the wake of the revelations (or assertions, if you will) in Scott McClellan’s new book, “What Happened,” leading TV pundits and reporters have taken to the airways to admit that there was some truth in his charge that they were “complicit enablers” in the march to war in Iraq. Many others have denied all that. (Print reporters have been largely silent so far.) We’ve already posted at least half a dozen articles about this at E&P Online.

What is most appalling, however, is that it took McClellan’s book to produce a debate about this tremendously vital subject at all.

More than two months ago, I wrote here and elsewhere (and stated on the “NewsHour” on PBS) that I found it appalling that in the orgy of coverage of the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war back in March, the media reviewed every aspect of the war and pointed fingers everywhere, except at the media. There was almost no self-assessment, after five years of war.

I observed then that this revealed a disturbing, and continuing, mode of denial or defensiveness—or else a shocking failure to realize what the war has wrought as the greatest blunder and catastrophe in our recent history. I made this same point in The New York Times yesterday. And, naturally, before that, in my new book, “So Wrong for So Long.”

Now, post-McClellan, some top media figures are, at least, self-assessing – but in most cases have concluded that they performed quite adequately in the run-up to the war. So the “coverup” continues.

Rather than review all that has been said, and left unsaid, in the past few days, I will simply perform the service of providing the transcript of an interview that has gotten some attention via a video at the MSNBC site, but never quoted in full due to the lack of a transcript. It deserves full study.

ARTICLE CONTINUES…

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