Readers who distrust President Bush’s statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq focused on a statement in a July 26 story that they said should be retracted. Many of the e-mails had the earmarks of an orchestrated campaign. In fact, a few writers sent the “call for action” posted on the local Peace and Democracy Task Force Web site.
What irked them was the 16th paragraph in a story by Chicago Tribune reporter Michael Kilian. It said: “Except for two abandoned laboratory trailers, U.S. forces occupying Iraq have found no evidence of nuclear weapons or the chemical and biological weapons that Bush cited in his call for war.”
Many who protested cited a June 15 article in the London Observer that said an official British investigation concluded the two trailers “are not mobile germ warfare labs, as was claimed by Tony Blair and President George Bush, but were for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, as the Iraqis have continued to insist.” The finding was attributed to unnamed “biological weapons experts working for the British government.”
Curious about whether a similar campaign for a retraction was under way in Chicago where the story originated, I contacted Don Wycliff, my counterpart at the Tribune. He said no readers there had taken issue with the statement.
He said the source for the story was the CIA, “which reached a carefully hedged conclusion that the trailers (the report said there were three) were probably intended for the production of chemical substances for weapons. The State Department later came out with a report saying that the CIA was wrong, that the trailers probably had nothing to do with weapons,” he said in an e-mail.
“Probably the most anyone can say is that there is no definitive evidence either way. The CIA hasn’t withdrawn its conclusion, but it’s now shadowed by doubt cast by the State Department analysis. In either case, that assertion should have been attributed to the CIA,” he said.
I agree with Wycliff both on the attribution and questions surrounding the use of the trailers. In fact, on June 26 the Union-Tribune carried a front-page story from the New York Times News Service that said: “The State Department’s intelligence division is disputing the CIA’s conclusion that mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making biological weapons, a U.S. government official said yesterday.”
The story cited a June 2 classified memorandum from the department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research that called the CIA finding premature. It said the memorandum was the “clearest sign yet of disagreement between U.S. intelligence agencies over the assertion, which was produced jointly by the CIA and the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency and made public May 28 on the CIA Web site.”
Given the history of dispute, the story should have been edited to attribute the trailers statement to Bush and the CIA; it also should have noted that the assertion was contested.
l l l
The e-mails and phone calls about the weapons story paled in comparison to the several hundred local, national and international e-mails in response to a July 20 front-page article about two Americans killed in the Middle East. Student Marla Bennett of San Diego died last year when a terrorist’s bomb exploded at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In March, Rachel Corrie, a pro-Palestinian peace activist, was run over by an Israeli bulldozer in the southern Gaza Strip. A campaign to protest including the two women in one story was orchestrated by www.honestreporting.com, a Web site that says it is dedicated to ensuring
Israel receives fair media coverage.
Many of the letters included profanity and most were from people outside San Diego. In responding, reporter Sandi Dolbee explained that the story was not about politics or right and wrong but about the loss experienced by two families.
l l l
An Associated Press photograph that appeared with a July 26 story about the Gov. Gray Davis recall showed Madge Overhouse of Los Gatos holding a petition she was circulating to fight the recall. The caption identified her as a librarian who worked against the recall despite weekly cancer treatments. What the caption failed to mention, reader Dudley Connell noted, was that Overhouse is Region 5 Director of the Santa Clara County Democratic Central Committee. I did a search on the Internet, as suggested by another reader, and within seconds found the information about her affiliation.
Was this an example of a liberal bias? Connell asked. Or was it something else? It was something else. The photo was intended to go with a different Associated Press story that identified Overhouse in her capacity with the Democratic committee.
The editor selecting the story and the editor selecting the photograph failed to communicate. They should have known the story and photograph were not meant to go together.
l l l
Gina Lubrano’s column commenting on the media appears Mondays. It is the policy of The San Diego Union-Tribune to correct all errors. To discuss accuracy or fairness in the news, please write to Gina Lubrano, readers representative, Box 120191, San Diego, CA 92112-0191, or telephone (619) 293-1525. Send e-mail to: readers.rep@uniontrib.com.
Copyright 2003 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
——————————————————————————–
