Media Nation

The New York Times and WashingtonPost.com weigh in on the phosphorus story today. The Times article, by Scott Shane, is so oriented toward dismissing it that it’s hard to know what to think. It’s not that Shane is necessarily wrong; it’s that he lacks evidence. The Post’s contribution comes, once again, in William Arkin’s national-security blog.

Shane gets off to a bad start by stating the Italian documentary that unleashed this story “incorrectly” referred to white phosphorus as a chemical weapon. Farther down in the piece, Shane circles around the issue, in effect conceding that the documentary was incorrect only in referring to the substance as an “illegal” chemical weapon. Legal or not, phosphorus is a chemical, and it is used as a weapon. Can we agree on that?

Shane also writes, “The half-hour film was riddled with errors and exaggerations, according to United States officials and independent military experts.” And there is this from Shane’s story:

“It’s discredited the American military without any basis in fact,” said John E. Pike, an expert on weapons who runs GlobalSecurity.org, an independent clearinghouse for military information. He said the “stupidity and incompetence” of official comments had fueled suspicions of a cover-up.

“The story most people around the world have is that the Americans are up to their old tricks — committing atrocities and lying about it,” Mr. Pike said. “And that’s completely incorrect.”

Now, this may all be true. Pike is a respected military analyst. The problem is that Shane presents no real evidence to disprove the claim that civilians were injured and killed by white phosphorus in the battle for Fallujah last year. The Pentagon has already had to backtrack and admit that phosphorus was used to kill insurgents. Is it really such a stretch to think that civilians were caught in the crossfire?

Arkin’s blog entry is considerably more enlightening than Shane’s article. His target is Lt. Gen. Walter E. “Buck” Buchanan III, who, in Arkin’s view, told the Associated Press “three brainless things” in an interview. Here’s what Arkin says about Buchanan’s remarks concerning the phosphorus reports:

“It is purely used as a marking round, not as a weapon. It marks the target so it becomes very clear,” Lt. Gen. Buchanan told the AP. Sir. In all due respect, have you not been reading the newspapers? The Pentagon and State Department have both acknowledged at this point that the Army used white phosphorous as an anti-personnel weapon during the battle of Fallujah in November 2004.

Was white phosphorus used as an incendiary specifically against civilians? I guess that’s still the $64,000 question. But to utter the boilerplate crap that it is only used as [sic] to create smoke or to mark targets is ignorant and insensitive.

What’s still lacking is any commitment on the part of the American media to investigate whether U.S. forces used chemical weapons (sorry, Mr. Shane) against a Fallujah population that included civilians. The whole world is watching. Just today, South Africa’s Globe & Mail has a story headlined “US used chemical weapons, then lied.” That’s just one example out of many.

Do Bill Keller and Len Downie want to wake up tomorrow only to find that the BBC, Robert Fisk or Al-Jazeera has rooted out the truth about what happened in Fallujah?

Also, Danny Schechter has some phosphorus links today.

I remain determinedly neutral about the Boston Globe’s daily Sidekick tab. All I ask is that it not demonstrably suck resources away from the paper’s news-gathering operations.

With that bit of throat-clearing, let’s take a look at today’s paper. There are a grand total of four ads in the 16-page Sidekick section, and that’s actually a lot worse than it sounds: it turns out that every one of them is a house ad, flogging a Globe-produced sports DVD (a full-page, back-cover ad at that), a book by photographer Bill Brett available from the Globe’s online store, a Globe-sponsored “Family Classics” book club and an upcoming event for the Globe Santa charity.

Meanwhile, on Page B5, in the City & Region section, is a full-page ad touting — yes — Sidekick. “Have some fun with your news,” you are urged. I’m not sure what the purpose of this ad is since, if you bought today’s Globe, you already have Sidekick.

Now, I doubt that Sidekick is costing the Globe all that much. If you got rid of it tomorrow, you’d have to expand the paper a bit to reintegrate the funnies and the TV listings, which wouldn’t be free. But surely the separate production run for Sidekick must cost something — the annual salary of a metro reporter and a copy editor, perhaps?

A project like Sidekick is worthless unless it makes money to support the Globe’s journalism. Ergo, Sidekick is worthless.

Another day of virtual silence from the American mainstream media on the use of white phosphorus by U.S. forces in the battle for Fallujah last year.

If you’re just tuning in, the Pentagon admitted to the BBC earlier this week that it had indeed used the flesh-melting substance, but denied having targeted civilians. The problem is that Fallujah was teeming with civilians, and an Italian television documentary recently reported that many of them were among the victims.

This morning’s Google News search reveals that the foreign press, especially in the U.K., continues to follow the story closely. Alternative news sources are as well.

Among the mainstream media, though, the two most interesting things I found were an editorial in the Brattleboro (Vt.) Reformer (“In a guerrilla war … firing a munition like WP [white phosphorus] into a city full of civilians is irresponsible”) and a column by Palm Beach Post ombudsman C.N. Hanif responding to a reader complaint on that paper’s silence.

Hanif quotes Post managing editor Bill Rose, who says his paper does not subscribe to Reuters, the only widely available wire service that carried the story.

A spammer has managed to get past Blogger’s word-verification feature. Click here and you’ll see what I mean. Coincidentally, Blogger recently introduced comment moderation. For now, I’m simply going to wait and see whether this gets out of hand. But moderation is definitely a possibility. It’s too bad.

Whole Foods: Nicer to lobsters than to its employees.

The Christian Science Monitor yesterday published a characteristically clear and concise analysis of reports — confirmed by the Pentagon — that U.S. forces used white phosphorus as a weapon in its battle against insurgents in Fallujah. The issue, of course, is whether the skin-burning substance inadvertently harmed the civilian population as well.

The Monitor’s Mark Sappenfield writes:

[T]he claims made by an Italian television station — that women and children were found with melted skin despite the fact that their clothes were unharmed — are consistent with the action of white phosphorous, scientists say.

In an offensive that involved targeting insurgents who were hidden in a city of 500,000 inhabitants, the allegations — if true — do not prove or disprove military malfeasance.

But they do raise the issue of the military’s judgment. Because fires can burn out of control during a battle, the Convention on Conventional Weapons in 1980 banned the use of incendiary devices, like white phosphorous, in heavily populated areas. America, however, did not sign the agreement.

Is this not a story? Incredibly, if you search Google News this morning for “phosphorus Iraq,” you will get a long list of stories — and nearly every one of them is from the foreign press.

Will the New York Times and/or the Washington Post come through in their Sunday editions? Stay tuned.

Unaccustomed as I am to defending Herald columnist Joe Fitzgerald, I nevertheless find this too funny — and sad — to pass up.

If you go to Michael Graham’s Web site right now, you will find this:

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2005

THE $1,000 THROW-DOWN IS ON! Today on 96.9 FM TALK, I made this challenge to Joe Fitzgerald of the Boston Herald, who claimed in print today that I’ve said “All Muslims are terrorists:”

If Mr. Fitzgerald can find any record in print, broadcast or anywhere else, that I have ever said “All Muslims are terrorists,” I will donate $1,000 to the charity of his choice. Any charity, up to and including the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The challenge has been issued, and I hope Mr. Fitzgerald’s sense of journalistic ethics inspires him to take it up. I will gladly make this donation if he can find anywhere I have made the statement he attributed to me…but he won’t. Because I’ve never said it, and I never would.

There is a slight problem here: Fitzgerald never quoted Graham as saying that. Rather, in a Wednesday column headlined “No room for ethnic hatred on Hub talk radio dial” (sub. req.), Fitzgerald wrote that Graham’s new employer, WTKK Radio, probably …

… thought Michael Graham would be worth a shot in Boston, given his track record, knowing he’s capable of muddying our cultural waters a little bit more by trashing all Muslims.

When he tried that at his last job in Washington, D.C., repeatedly denigrating Islam as “a terrorist organization,” his bosses wisely pulled him off the air and told him to scram, which is how he wound up here, where the industry’s standards have sunk so low that some signals seem to come from the gutter.

Yes, there are Muslim savages, such as the terrorists who beheaded blindfolded captives on live TV while proclaiming, “All praise to Allah!” But does that mean every practicing Muslim has bloody hands, too, as Graham implied?…

According to Graham, it’s simple: There is no line. Rather than zeroing in on elements of a group, you just hate the whole group. It’s easier that way, and, besides, it’s good for ratings.

All Muslims are terrorists? Please.

You will note that nowhere does Fitzgerald directly quote Graham as saying, “All Muslims are terrorists.” (And if you’re wondering whether the print edition of Fitzgerald’s column is different, I checked: It isn’t.)

What Fitzgerald is doing, of course, is recounting the events that got Graham fired from his last radio job, at WMAL Radio in Washington. Here is a passage from the Washington Post account of that fiasco (via Mark Jurkowitz):

According to WMAL, Graham said “Islam is a terrorist organization” 23 times on his July 25 program. On the same show, he also said repeatedly that “moderate Muslims are those who only want to kill Jews” and that “the problem is not extremism. The problem is Islam.”

Read that passage again. Does Joe Fitzgerald accurately summarize the views Graham expressed on that occasion? Absolutely. I’d say Fitzgerald ought to collect on that $1,000 reward right now.

The Herald’s Jay Fitzgerald keeps the heat on new WTKK Radio (96.9 FM) talk-show host Michael Graham this morning, reporting that he lost an on-air job in 1999 for some sick Columbine humor.

The Globe’s Clea Simon interviews Graham, who says his first priority will be to bring back Boston’s Veterans Day parade. “I don’t care if I have to go out myself and hire bums and hookers and give them flags,” Graham tells Simon. Michael, my man: We don’t care, either.

During the past couple of days I’ve spent several minutes that felt like hours listening to Graham. My snap judgment — subject to change, of course — is that he may be among the most unlistenable hosts it’s ever been my displeasure to hear. I didn’t like Jay Severin, whom Graham replaced; yet Graham comes up considerably short of Severin. To wit:

• Severin is reasonably intelligent. He’s not as smart as he thinks he is — no one is as smart is Severin thinks he is — but he’s no dummy, either. I don’t know whether Graham is a dolt or not, but he definitely plays one on the radio.
• Severin’s got great pipes. He’s easy to listen to, especially if you pay no attention to what he’s actually saying. Graham’s normal on-air speaking voice is a high-pitched, loud, on-rushing yelp.
• As much of a right-winger as Severin can often be, he does hold a few counter-intuitive views. Among other things, he opposes the war in Iraq, and supports an immediate pullout given that no weapons of mass destruction were found there. Graham is so pro-war that it’s unconscionable he hasn’t signed up for a stint in the Marines.

Is it too soon to tell? Sure. But screamers don’t have a good record of success in the Boston market. Howie Carr must be thrilled.

How is this possible? Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie says his paper will aggressively report on Bob Woodward’s source in the Valerie Plame leak investigation, and will reveal the identity of that source if it can do so without violating Woodward’s promise of confidentiality.

Today’s New York Times report includes this curious passage:

“Each reporter is bound only by his own promises of confidentiality,” The Post’s executive editor, Leonard Downie Jr., said.

While a decision on whether to print the identity would depend on a number of factors, Mr. Downie said, “if the information is found independent of our source relationship, sure we’ll print it.”

But hasn’t it been established that Downie now knows the identity of Woodward’s source? Wasn’t that the whole point of Woodward’s trip to Downie’s woodshed? Isn’t this a huge complicating factor?

Let’s say an enterprising Post reporter thinks she’s established the identity of Woodward’s source. If the Post publishes that story, would Downie be tacitly acknowledging that that is, indeed, who the source was? Surely he wouldn’t knowingly let his paper publish wrong information, would he?

Then again, Downie is famous for refusing to vote, lest it compromise his objectivity. So who knows?

Perhaps someone will ask him later this morning.

I’m going to take a pass for the moment on the Bob Woodward matter. If you just can’t get enough, Romenesko is accumulating links here. Instead, I want to look at a story that’s getting very little attention in the American media — and to ponder why that’s the case.

This past Sunday, the New York Times’ Week in Review section published an article that could prove infamous. Written by Scott Shane, the story is essentially a puff piece about the Open Source Center, a new U.S. intelligence unit. Shane wrote:

A documentary on Italian television on Tuesday accuses American forces of using white phosphorus shells in the assault on Falluja last year not just for nighttime illumination, their usual purpose, but to burn to death Iraqi insurgents and civilians. The mainstream American news media, whose reporters had witnessed the fighting and apparently seen no evidence of this, largely ignored the claim.

“We posted it because it was getting significant play on the Web and in foreign media, which means it could influence public opinion,” said Douglas J. Naquin, director of the center. The Web site — open to government workers and contractors — included links to the video and to foreign news reports about it from the BBC in London to The Daily Times in Pakistan.

Notice that the tone of Shane’s article is essentially one of debunking the phosphorus claims. We now know that what the situation called for was not debunking but, rather, aggressive reporting. Yet the story is still barely a blip on the U.S. mediascape.

The American media should have gone on full alert last week, when the phosphorus allegation became a major story in the European press. Here, for instance, is the top of an article that appeared in the Independent of London on Nov. 9:

A leading campaign group has demanded an urgent inquiry into a report that US troops indiscriminately used a controversial incendiary weapon during the battle for Fallujah. Photographic evidence gathered from the aftermath of the battle suggests that women and children were killed by horrific burns caused by the white phosphorus shells dropped by US forces.

The Pentagon has always admitted it used phosphorus during last year’s assault on the city, which US commanders said was an insurgent stronghold. But they claimed they used the brightly burning shells “very sparingly” and only to illuminate combat areas.

What part of “photographic evidence” do Bill Keller, Len Downie et al. not understand? Isn’t this something they would want to see for themselves to determine whether there’s a story? Apparently not.

A week later, the truth came out, when the BBC — not the Times, not the Post — reported that U.S. forces had, indeed, used white phosphorus in the Fallujah battle not just to “illuminate combat areas” but also to inflict injury and death on the insurgents. In a piece on the BBC Web site yesterday, we learned:

US troops used white phosphorus as a weapon in last year’s offensive in the Iraqi city of Falluja, the US has said.

“It was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants,” spokesman Lt Col Barry Venable told the BBC — though not against civilians, he said.

The US had earlier said the substance — which can cause burning of the flesh — had been used only for illumination.

BBC defence correspondent Paul Wood says having to retract its denial is a public relations disaster for the US.

It gets worse. It turns out that, under the terms of an international treaty — a treaty that the U.S. has refused to ratify — it is forbidden to use phosphorus as a weapon in areas where civilians might be exposed. And Fallujah, obviously, was a place where many civilians were holed up, even though there was some effort to evacuate them before the battle began.

Technically, it’s probably an exaggeration to call this chemical warfare. But it certainly looks like chemical warfare, doesn’t it? So here we are, some two and a half years into the war in Iraq, and we are now faced with the reality that U.S. forces have engaged in precisely the sorts of behavior that we found so appalling when Saddam Hussein engaged in them: torturing Iraqis and blasting them with lethal chemicals.

Atop the Independent’s Web site right now is a headline that reads “Incendiary Weapons: The big white lie.” It’s the lead story in the Times of London’s Iraq coverage. Oddly, it’s not played prominently on Al-Jazeera’s English-language Web site, but there’s still a fairly detailed story posted on the site. Yet the American media are still lagging.

The Washington Post, which managed to run a 222-word brief on page A16 on Wednesday, has nothing today. (WashingtonPost.com did run an interesting blog entry on Tuesday by William M. Arkin offering some perspective on phosphorus, and concluding that the manner in which it was used in Fallujah was “terribly ill-conceived.” But I wonder how many people saw that?)

NYTimes.com today has a Reuters story summarizing what we know so far, including the Pentagon’s defense of its use of phosphorus and its denial that it targeted civilians. But I had to use the Web site’s search engine to find it, and I’m not sure it even made it into the print edition. I do know that it’s not on the front page.

The Boston Globe, to its credit, gives the story front-page play today, publishing a Reuters piece with supplemental material from the Associated Press, as well as a Q&A about phosphorus. But the network news divisions take their cue from the Times and the Post, not the Globe.

There’s no doubt that the media are overwhelmed right now with negative news from Iraq, most prominently the discovery this week of a torture chamber run by our ally, the Iraqi government. But the phosphorus story could, over time, become as damaging a symbol of what went wrong as the Abu Ghraib photos did earlier. This story needs to be reported aggressively and thoroughly. What are the media waiting for?