Greg Mitchell submitted an assigned piece to the Washington Post on the failures of major news media outlets’ coverage of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. WaPo summarily rejected the piece and ran a milquetoast Paul Farhi story that kinda let the American media off the hook for its tacit and overt support of the military op.
And the Post is defending its rejection:
Outlook editor Carlos Lozada told The Huffington Post that the Post didn’t run Mitchell’s piece because it didn’t draw the “broader analytical points or insights” the paper was looking for on the topic of Iraq War mea culpas. (Mitchell has posted his article here.)
The 10th anniversary of the invasion is the cause for all of this journalistic reflection, but a lot of disinterest, ignorance and sighing accompanied the occasion, as well. Mitchell’s piece deserves publication (see The Nation, thankfully). Illustratively, he does point out WaPo’s own failure to offer an apology, even well into the Iraq efforts. He points out that Howard Kurtz authored a lengthy critique of the paper’s work.
Regardless of the rationale behind the rejection, the action is notable. A decade has passed since some of the mass media’s most dire government complicity took place, sending the country down a path from which it could never return. The straightforward accounting in Mitchell’s piece paints the picture. And the picture is worth revisiting.
Unrelatedly (but equal in importance here), check out FAIR’s blow-by-blow roundup of press accounts as the invasion took place.
Sandy 