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Featuring Essays by:
Edward Said, Robert Fisk, Michael Neumann, Shahid Alam, Alexander
Cockburn, Uri Avnery, Bill and Kathy Christison and More
Recent
Stories
August
4, 2003
Bruce
Jackson
News that Isn't News: How the NYT's
Pimps for the White House
August
2 / 3, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Meet the Real WMD Fabricator: Rolf
Ekeus
Tamara
R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down
Francis
Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
Intervene?
Saul
Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?
Poets'
Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming
August
1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Stopping Prison Rape
Alex Coolman
Who Moved My Soap: Trivializing
Prison Rape
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Stan Goff
Injury and Decorum: The Missing Wounded in Iraq
Wayne
Madsen
Europe Unplugs from the Matrix
Robert
Fisk
Wolfowitz the Censor
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft Loses Big in Puerto Rico
Website
of the Day
Stop Prisoner Rape
July
31, 2003
Ray
McGovern
The Prostitution of Intelligence
Brian
Cloughley
Wolfowitz's Operative Statement
Sheldon
Hull
The RIAA's Jihad:
The Devil's Music (Industry)
Elaine
Cassel
The Next Time You Crack a Lawyer Joke, Think of These Attorneys
Sheldon
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True Lies: Propaganda and Bush's
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Hammond
Guthrie
Speculation Blues
Website
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Army of One?
July
30, 2003
David
Lindorff
Poindexter the Terror Bookie
Marjorie
Cohn
Why Iraq and Afghanistan? It's About
the Oil
Elaine
Cassel
How Ashcroft Coerces Guilty Pleas
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Zvi
Bar'el
The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War
Lisa Walsh
Thomas
Killing Mustafa Hussein: Death of a Child, Birth of a Legend?
Sean
Carter
Pat Robertson's Prayer Jihad: God, Sodomy and the Supremes
ND Jayaprakash
India and Ariel Sharon
Steve
Perry
Bush's Top 40 Lies
Standard
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Correction about Bloomberg and Outscourcing
Website
of the Day
Bring Them Home Now!
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
July
29, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
"Journalist Spotted! Journalist
Dead!" Guatemala Bleeds; US Press Yawns
Thomas
J. Nagy
The Belligerent Dr. Pipes
Kurt Nimmo
Tom Delay Goes to Jerusalem
Chris
Floyd
Dead Reckoning: Bush Warriors Sign Off on War Crimes
Robert
Fisk
Another Botched Raid; Another Massacre
Jason Leopold
Did Chalabi Help Write Bush's State of the Union Address?
Conn Hallinan
Food Bully: Bush's Biotech Shock and Awe Campaign
Dan
Bacher
Sacramento's War on Free Speech
Ray
McGovern
Cheney Chicanery
Website
of the Day
Julie Hilden Caught on Tape
July 26 / 27, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
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Book Cooking at Boeing
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The Power of Death
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Monsieur Moussaoui
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Lula
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Man Talk
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Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
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Prison Bitch
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True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
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Wendell
Berry
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Watch
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Uzma
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Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
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Gore Vidal
The
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Francis Boyle
Impeach
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Click Here
for More Stories.
|
August
4, 2003
News That Isn't
News
The
New York Times and Michael R. Gordon: Passive Pimping for the
White House
By
BRUCE JACKSON
"Weapons of Mass Confusion," a long article
by the New York Times's chief war correspondent, Michael R. Gordon,
prominently posted in the Times's
electronic edition August 1, has the look and feel of
news. It is presented as news in a news part of the site. But
it isn't news. It isn't an editorial. It is flackery. It floats,
without any attribution at all, an Administration hypothesis
about the Administration's failure to find weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq. It is Judith Millerism at its worst.
The article is datelined Camp Doha, Kuwait,
Aug. 1: Gordon is still out there, getting the facts at the press
briefings. The first two paragraphs go:
There is a bold and entirely plausible
theory that may account for the mystery over Iraq's missing weapons
of mass destruction.
Saddam Hussein, the theory holds, ordered
the destruction of his weapon stocks well before the war to deprive
the United States of a rationale to attack his regime and to
hasten the eventual lifting of the United Nations sanctions.
But the Iraqi dictator retained the scientists and technical
capacity to resume the production of chemical and biological
weapons and eventually develop nuclear arms.
Bold and entirely plausible? That's objective
reporting? That's a lead for a story in the news section? Here's
a theory supported by no data, that just happens to deal perfectly
with one of the Bush administration's most recalcitrant public
relations  problems
and Michael R. Gordon begins by characterizing it as "bold
and entirely plausible."
What's bold about it, other than the
likelihood that it's untenable? Why does "plausible"
warrant the adjective "entirely"? "Plausible,"
even if warranted, works perfectly well in this sentence and
context without any modifier at all. Before we get to the story
Gordon is telling us what to think about it.
Gordon never ties this "bold and
entirely plausible theory" to anybody. Instead, he finds
a few people in the defense establishment-particularly an Israeli
military specialist-who say it is entirely plausible. Well, lots
of things are plausible in this world. That doesn't mean they
happened. It's plausible, to some people, that Jimmy Dean didn't
really die in that crash and that Elvis is cryogenically preserved
and that funny little people from another galaxy landed in New
Mexico 50 years ago and got a bunch of girls pregnant. Plausible
doesn't tell us anything. You can sit in any bar in the country
and hear plausible all night long and go home knowing not one
thing more than when you left. Journalism isn't supposed to be
about the plausible. It's supposed to be about what happened.
Passive Theory, Active
Demon
In his third paragraph, Gordon shifts
to Hussein and the active voice:
Mr. Hussein's calculation was that he
could restart his weapons programs once the international community
lost interest in Iraq and became absorbed with other crises.
That would enable him to pursue his dream of making Iraq the
dominant power in the Persian Gulf region and make it easier
for him to deter enemies at home and abroad.
Not, "According to the theory, Mr.
Hussein's calculation was." Just "Mr. Hussein's calculation
was." Why no qualifier? With a qualifier, it's somebody's
idea. Without a qualifier, it is the New York Times telling us
a fact. The only fact in that paragraph is the fact that those
words appeared in the electronic edition of the August 1 New
York
Through the rest of the article, Gordon
continues hyping the passive theory, never ascribing it to anyone,
and immediately leaping from it to declarative statement of putative
fact:
In the meantime, a plausible theory is
that the Iraqi dictator was trying to strike a subtle balance
between averting a war and preserving Iraq's military options
for the future. Destroying the stocks would deprive the United
Nations Security Council of a reason to authorize military action
to oust the regime, he calculated. But Mr. Hussein continued
to believe that the programs were essential to his strategic
ambition to dominate the Persian Gulf and to his efforts to fend
off internal and external challenges to his rule.
Lousy Logic in the
New York Times and the White House
The theory itself is syllogistic and
ad hoc. It is pretty much what Bush or his surrogates have been
saying whenever anyone has been able to get one of them to stand
still long enough to take the questions:
Q: You said there were weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq and that's why we went to war. But no WMD
have been found. So did we go to war for trumped up reasons?
A: Of course not. We know there were
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Didn't we tell you that
before we invaded Iraq? If there were weapons then and now there
are no weapons it means Saddam either hid them or destroyed them.
Since we haven't found them, he must have destroyed them.
Q: Why would he have destroyed them?
A: To keep us from finding them. Why
else would he have destroyed them?
Q.E.D. This is the logic of the witch-determination
scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the conclusion of which
is, "If she weighs the same as a duck she's made of wood."
Why the Passive Voice
is Lousy Journalism
English teachers tell kids to avoid the
passive voice because it's flaccid and indirect. Things happen;
they're not done. Things are said; nobody says them. Nobody's
home in the passive. Nobody takes any responsibility for anything
in the passive.
Which is why it is so beloved by little
children who are culpable ("the cup fell"), by murderers
("the gun went off") and by politicians and generals
wishing to dissemble ("The decision was made...it was thought....The
bombs fell in the wrong place...") You can say almost anything
in the passive without attaching it to any human being. Bad things
happen but nobody did anything. If you're doing bad things, practice
up on the passive voice.
In political discourse, the passive gets
something out there in a way that avoids interrogation. You can't
cross-examine the source that never got named about what justification
exists for the smear tossed into the public hopper ("It
has long been known that the senator prefers little boys and
shoots heroin....) or what grounds exist for a broad, sweeping
statement that may have no foundation in fact whatsoever ("There
is a bold and entirely plausible theory that....").
Location, location,
location
I've got another question (I almost wrote
"There is another question....") about this article
by Michael R. Gordon: if this bold theory is really entirely
plausible, how come the piece never made it to the print edition?
How come it never made it to hard-copy? Gordon is one of their
heavy-hitters, their chief war correspondent, their source of
major policy pieces from the Camp Doha and points beyond. He's
been a regular on the PBS Newshour since the war started, explaining
everything to us. Michael R. Gordon knows the difference between
stories that are ascribed and stories that are not, the difference
between Judith Miller puff pieces and real journalism.
So what's he doing writing this kind
of flaccid prose and why is it located only on the web site?
Why is the graphic a jet fighter half-buried in desert sand?
Are he and the Times trying it out for the Administration? Are
they filling space on a dull news day? Are they making it up
as they go?
There is a bold and entirely plausible
theory that....
Bruce Jackson
is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel P. Capen Professor
of American Culture at University at Buffalo. He is a documentary
filmmaker and the author or editor of 20 other books. In 2002,
the government of France honored his
ethnographic and anti-death penalty work by appointing him Chevalier,
l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His new book, The
Peace Bridge Chronicles, will be published next month.
He also edits the Buffalo
Report. Jackson can be reached at: bjackson@buffalo.edu
Weekend Edition Features for August 2/3, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Meet the Real WMD Fabricator: Rolf
Ekeus
Tamara
R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down
Francis
Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
Intervene?
Saul
Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?
Poets'
Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming
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