Activists contacting major media outlets regarding their coverage of Iraq seem to be having an impact on the coverage of this timely issue.
On September 30, FAIR issued an action alert documenting the limited coverage of a major anti-war demonstration in London. The demonstration merited only passing mentions in the Washington Post and New York Times, so hundreds of activists contacted the papers to ask about this news judgment. On October 6, Post ombudsman Michael Getler, while not mentioning FAIR by name, agreed with the activists’ concerns. Getler wrote:
I’m in agreement with the readers on these complaints. Whatever one thinks about the wisdom of a new war, once it starts it is too late to air arguments that should have been aired before.
The Post was not the only outlet that seemed to respond to recent FAIR alerts. On September 24, FAIR challenged the New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe over their shifting coverage of the UNSCOM arms inspectors in Iraq being used as spies. As FAIR noted, these papers broke the story of the UNSCOM spying in 1998, citing U.S. officials; lately, however, the papers have shifted to referring to the spying as “allegations” leveled by Saddam Hussein.
On October 2, 2002, a Times story about Iraq included this reference to the inspections team: “The reform followed the disclosure that a United States spy on the United Nations team had planted an electronic eavesdropping device in Baghdad that helped guide allied bombing in December 1998.”
A similar change was seen at USA Today, the subject of a FAIR action alert on August 12. The paper repeated the notion that the U.N. inspectors were “expelled” from Iraq in 1998, when in fact they were withdrawn by inspections chief Richard Butler. Subsequent reporting in the paper has been more accurate, like an October 2 report that explained that the “U.N. weapons inspectors left in 1998 amid a dispute over access to suspected weapons sites.”
These stories show that media activism can have an impact. The very same errors are still being circulated in numerous mainstream media outlets, and anti-war demonstrations continue to be undercovered. FAIR encourages activists to communicate with news outlets when they see such problems.
