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Tough Brooke Gladstone gives media a pass for supporting Iraq war

I caught the host of NPR’s “On the Media” show, Brooke Gladstone, on the Leonard Lopate show yesterday, discussing the ten year anniversary of the Iraq invasion, and I was shocked by her toughness when it came to the mainstream reporters who had supported the war. Her own husband Fred Kaplan of Slate was in that category– he has since regretted it– but again and again on Lopate’s show Gladstone gave mainstream reporters a pass. She refused to criticize the Times for its awful coverage, or the New Yorker for its support for the war.

Shockingly, Gladstone began by saying the press shouldn’t have questioned the war because the Congress wasn’t doing so: 

Usually the press is able to question the government, if Congress is questioning the government. But if Congress keeps quiet, the media have no protective cover, and they end up being accused of partisanship when they raise those questions.

Lopate questioned this, said the papers have autonomy. But Gladstone was tough, and now valorized the pressure of advertisers:

Again, the fear of being called partisanship at the time that the nation was still in trauma…. they weren’t afraid of the goverment, they were afraid of their own audiences and advertisers.

9/11 was not business as usual. And the timidity came because of one’s own– journalists, it’s hard to believe, are people too. … They felt the anguish of their audience and the sensitivity of their advertisers to criticizing the government directly. They wished they had Congress to do it for them.

Congress to do it for them! Did reporters learn anything from Vietnam? The New Yorker led the opposition to that war. And as Lopate wisely pointed out, the New Yorker “strongly” supported the war, including editor David Remnick.

To which Gladstone responded, it’s not her job to criticize the New Yorker, or Jeffrey Goldberg either.  

Well, some did briefly support it in the runup. They believed Colin Powell’s presentation before the UN. It was a persuasive presentation. But I don’t want to speak to the position of the New Yorker writers.

P.S. Remnick gets this immunity widely; I believe because journalists dream of working at The New Yorker and don’t want to criticize him.

Lopate keeps at it: Has there been a public reckoning for any of the journalists? Judy Miller went to jail, but not for misleading the public? What about the other people who advocated so strongly for going to war?

Gladstone notes that the Times apologized for supporting the war:

In terms of the reporters, you know the New York Times apologized for being a little bit too credulous when it came to the information that it was getting from the government.

The information it got from the government? I believe Gladstone is rationalizing the conduct of court journalists. And when Lopate persisted that the Times’ apology was “self-protective,” Gladstone again stood up for those supporting the most obviously disastrous foreign-policy move since Vietnam:

You know, there’s going to be good reporting and there’s going to be bad reporting in every event that ever gets reported. War is particularly subject to all the biases that are baked into the media business, and this one following the greatest attack on American soil, you would expect that the media would go the most awry after an incident like that. I’m certainly not apologizing for it, I’ve spent the last decade chronicling the messes that American media made. But you can understand why.

Wow, that answer is tough! No introspection. And speaking of baked-in biases, Daniel Luban states the obvious in his ten-year post-mortem on the war: that neoconservative visions of defanging Israel’s eastern enemy and putting the peace process on hold were a large factor in the decision to go to war. Andrew Bacevich makes a similar point about Paul Wolfowitz’s motives in Harper’s. And those bad ideas migrated left: Joe Klein has said that the neocons peddled this theory to journalists before the war; which is surely one reason Klein, who cut his teeth opposing Vietnam, signed off on the catastrophe— however “briefly,”to use the Gladstone term of art.

Gladstone gives all those folks a pass. Here she goes, praising George Packer of the New Yorker, who caricatured the February 2003 demonstrations against the war and fell for Paul Berman’s hysterical pro-Israel views of Arab extremism:

Some of the very people who may have initially supported the war and turned against it explained exactly why….[Such as] George Packer who had supported the invasion in its very early days before he saw clearly where it was heading. Those are just journalists who do a really wonderful job of digging in and questioning their assumptions.

Did they explain exactly why? I don’t think so. The Iraq war was a tragedy. It calls for tremendous introspection, including on the part of Jews who abandoned their Vietnam-era opposition to brutal adventures out of concern for Israel. That’s why I started this website.

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Who were the leading voices in the American media at the time? I believe it was zealots like Berman, Goldberg, Chait, Remnick, Friedman (and let’s not forget Beinart, the list goes on) and many other liberal Jews who on domestic policy are strongly against the Republican party but who broke bread with Krauthammer, Kristol and others on Iraq.

We’ve discussed this on this site many times, how liberal Jews created an informal media alliance with neocons, many of the leading ones Jewish too, when it came to matters foreign policy in the Middle East and especially Israel.

The George Packers of the world merely saw where the wind was blowing and since they have no basic principles (and are always looking over their shoulders when it comes to their jobs) just went along. They weren’t the movers and the shakers, merely the enforcers of the social pecking order.

It’s still early to talk about Israel in the mainstream media in this context in an open fashion.
While I do think oil was a key concern too(but more from the business community/military-industrial complex etc), Israel was a prime mover in many of these prominent journalist’s opinions.

It’s hard to fathom that most liberal Zionists supported the war for oil. And this is never asked. If it wasn’t for oil, was Israel a concern? Many will avoid the topic, because they know they’re vulnerable.

Walt/Mearsheimer touched upon this – which was one of their great crimes in the eyes of these people – they did write that while Israel wasn’t the only concern, it was a necessary pillar in the motivation to go to war for many of these ‘liberals’.

I think this was one of the most underreported reasons why they faced the firestorm they did face. It wasn’t just AIPAC. A lot of prominent liberal Jewish journalists knew by the time of 2005-2007 that Iraq had gone to hell and many also knew that Israel was a prime motivation for them supporting the war – and now tons of Americans and Iraqi civilians were dying in a brutal and endless malaise.

And then Walt/Mearsheimer came out and called these people out on it. Remember; the Israel lobby isn’t only institutions like AIPAC. It’s a “loose coalition” including people in the media. Jeff Goldberg knows he’s part of that coalition. And while that coalition is indeed loose(see the current disagreements about Israel’s direction) back then it was very solid.

So Walt/Mearsheimer’s book was also a direct and personal blow to many of these people, which is part of the reason why the reaction to it became so visceral.
Had Walt/Mearsheimer been more timid, and only focused on AIPAC, for example, I think they would have gotten away easier. But then didn’t. They knew/know that the media had a key role for Iraq as well as for the ongoing support for Israel(even NPR is right-wing on Israel!).

And in the midst of all this, you look at the neocons, their liberal friends, and it’s a ton of Jews. Of course it’s an uncomfortable conversation to have for them. Why was Israel such a primary concern for them? It raises inevitable questions about dual loyalty, did you support a war for Israel but which was going to be paid for by American blood and treasure?

That is, ultimately, the implication here. And that’s why they went ballistic on Walt/Mearsheimer. Even if they were never that direct, people understood that was the inevitable terminal to arrive at, which is, as I mentioned before, one of the reasons why the media went so nuts against them both. AIPAC is powerful but it isn’t that powerful. The media onslaught contained more components.

They felt the anguish of their audience and the sensitivity of their advertisers to criticizing the government directly. They wished they had Congress to do it for them.

they felt the anguish of their audience, suffering the loss of 3,000 in an attack on the US, so the press comforted their audience by cheerleading for a war that caused thousands more deaths, tens of thousands of maimed, and which bankrupted the country (not to mention that little thing about how the wars have affected iraqis and afghanis.)

they wanted congress to criticize the government? congress ‘is’ part of the government, dumkopf. we don’t go to war without the congress.

i hate to say it yet again, but is this the state of our elite? award swapping, a good colorist and smart glasses. useless.

Gladstone is being goofy, which I guess is a privilege of belonging to the Washington establishment. When it comes to gossipy issues like Howard Dean’s “shout” or Monika Lewinski they are perfectly happy to question politicians. When the issue is some “party line” topic like war, not so much. The British press managed to raise some questions about Iraq’s WMD without the sky falling on their heads. In the lead up to the invasion many Americans were reading the Guardian.

P.S.– the reasons Powell’s presentation seemed persuasive was that there was no opposing view to question it. Iraq sure wasn’t allowed to defend itself from powell’s bogus allegations in the Security Council.

“To which Gladstone responded, it’s not her job to criticize the New Yorker, or Jeffrey Goldberg either”

“You know, there’s going to be good reporting and there’s going to be bad reporting in any event… War is particularly subject to all the biases that are baked into the media business, and this one following the greatest attack on American soil, you would expect that the media would go the most awry after an incident like that.”

Oh for f’s sake you stupid, stupid, stupid woman. ….how is it “not your job” to criticize anyone if you’re “On the Media”…..huh? How are you soooo monumentally stupid that you don’t know that after an event like 911 is exactly when the media should most definitely NOT go awry with it’s ‘biases’.
I wish we could we could lock people on the public air waves for being criminally stupid, I really do.