The lead story in the New York Times print edition today (4/26/13) bore the headline:
White House Says Syria Has Used Chemical Arms
Well, that’s pretty definitive, isn’t it? But then if you read the first line of the story, you get a different picture:
The White House said Thursday that it believes the Syrian government has used chemical weapons in its civil war, an assessment that could test President Obama’s repeated warnings that such an attack could precipitate American intervention in Syria.
The White House says it “believes” Syria has used chemical weapons—and the story goes on to say that this position is held “with varying degrees of confidence” by various U.S. intelligence agencies. The White House said that “more conclusive evidence was needed” before the United States could act on this information. In the online version, this article is headlined:
White House Says It Believes Syria Has Used Chemical Arms
—a far more appropriate, and less inflammatory, summary. (The story’s url indicates that “suspects” was the original headline verb, which would arguably be a more accurate way to describe the information presented.)
Note that the Obama administration has threatened to go to war if Syria uses chemical weapons—so by mislabeling its story, the New York Times is in effect making it more likely that the United States will get involved in another Middle Eastern civil war. This is a life-and-death subject where you want to get it right the first time.
The Times is not the only outlet guilty of originally overselling this story. “U.S. Now Says Syria Has Used Chemical Weapons” is on the front page of USA Today (4/26/13); inside, a subhead tells us that the U.S. is “Still Assessing Chemicals’ Use in Attacks.”
Add AP to the list
“Chemical weapons used, U.S. contends”
The subhead reads
“The proof isn’t solid, the White House says, but lawmakers are impatient.”
So, while it’s to be expected that gummints will “contend” something is the case, without offering “solid” evidence to substantiate their claim
You might expect journalists to look askance at the practice, rather than amplifying its impact.
Well, you might expect that
If you have pronounced psychotic tendencies.
This is really nothing new.
I learned a long time ago that you need to wait at least a week before you can feel that what you read in the media is starting to be a probably accurate report.
As an example, my step-father and his small cabin cruiser didn’t return to the dock on Sunday evening in San Diego in the 1960’s. When he was still missing early the next morning (Monday), I called the Coast Guard and reported it.
In the next morning’s newspaper, if I didn’t know what the story was about, I wouldn’t have even have recognized it. They finally started to get the facts straight during the following week as the Coast Guard searched many square miles of ocean from well in to Mexico to well north of Los Angeles. The story was main news for about two weeks and then went away.
There was never a trace of his boat or any leads in spite of a very major investigation by the insurance company. He was finally declared legally deceased after 7 years – which as far as I know was not covered by the media at all.
Interestingly, it was probably a lowly copy editor who wrote this headline (having started out in this role at a small paper in New Jersey in 1988, I know the drill). Within very limited space, copy editors have to pound out headlines that telegraph the essence of a story…a huge responsibility, really, in major stories such as this one. Higher ups have to approve the heads, of course — all I’m suggesting is that the error may have originated from below rather than from above.
On the other hand, ever since I read FAIR’s cover story on major papers agreeing to withold secrets for the US government, I’ve wondered whether it may also work the other way, where White House sources request a certain spin on news for “national security reasons.”
Bingo, Miranda.
And everyone who only bothers to read headlines and/or magazine covers (i.e. the majority) will spread the misinformation far and wide, thus leading to public support of yet another US invasion based on lies.
Rags like the NYT and USA Today aren’t being negligent. They’re doing what they’re told to do by those in power.
Don’t blame the everybody at the NY Times for one overworked editor’s attempt to tell the story with a minimum of words — words that fit in a one-column hed. Maybe three people, at most, saw that before the press ran. Yeah — it’s a poor choice, but the reporter wrote “believes.”