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A debate delayed is a debate denied
By Professor William Dorman. Featuring the insight and  expertise of some of Sac State’s all-star professors—without the final exam.
If there is one thing history is clear on, it’s the reality that the only meaningful time todebate war is before one begins. It’s too late after it’s underway simply because nationalism, fear and anger overwhelm the public.
Yet Americans didn’t really get the chance to debate whether to go to war with Iraq in 2003. And most scholars and journalists—albeit belatedly— agree that one huge reason
for this missed opportunity was a passive, sometimes openly deferential news media that too often took the Bush administration’s word on the nature of the Iraqi threat. The result: a foreign policy shambles of unusual dimension.
Keeping in mind that it’s the press that serves as the public’s primary textbook on foreign affairs, consider that a clear majority of Americans in the run-up to the war came to
believe one or more of the Administration’s three major claims to justify the war, all of which proved false:
- Iraq had a key role in planning Sept. 11,
- Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or WMD, and
- A war with Iraq had the support of world opinion.
The chief result was that before the war started, public opinion in favor of the President’s war option never fell below 55 percent and eventually achieved a level of about 70 percent.
The most dramatic example of how the press contributed to the administration’s success at lodging false belief in the minds
of so many Americans was the mainstream media’s treatment of Secretary of State Colin Powell following his February 2003
presentation on WMDs to the United Nations. The editorial consensus can be summed up by The Washington Post’s assertion:“Irrefutable.” Most news coverage followed suit and left his assertions unexamined and unchallenged.
The impact of Powell’s appearance and subsequent news and editorial treatment can not be overstated. According to one
study, there “was a 30-point jump in the number of Americans who felt convinced of a link between Saddam Hussein and al-
Qaida” after Powell spoke, and much of this opinion shift occurred among voters who identified themselves as Democrats.
To the defense, “But how could Powell or journalists have known?” one careful student of the press and Iraq replies,
“Beginning in the summer of 2002, the ‘intelligence community’ was rent by bitter disputes over how Bush officials were using
the data on Iraq. Many journalists knew about this, yet few chose to write about it.”
The most telling evidence that journalism failed in regard to the issue of WMDs comes not from academics or anti-war dissidents but from the journalistic community itself. A year after the major combat ended, The New York Times announced findings of an unprecedented introspective survey of its own coverage and offered this central conclusion: “We did not
listen carefully to the people who disagreed with us... we had a ‘group think’ of our own.” The Washington Post and other news organizations would follow suit in 2004.
How did a free press—upon which Jefferson and Madison placed such high hopes—come to such a pass?
In my view, press behavior in 2003 has its roots in the kind of
“national security journalism” that emerged after WWII and prevailed throughout the Cold War. The combination of military and ideological competition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, taken together with a fear of nuclear weapons, had
transforming effects on American politics and institutions, not the least of which is the press. I call what resulted a “journalism of deference,” which after the end of communism
in 1989 was given new life in 2001 by the fear of terrorism.
Understand, “deference” means a yielding to the judgment of another, not abject submission, which is why journalists can and frequently do eventually turn on public officials.
The problem is that such a turn occurs only after a policy is in deep trouble and policy elites have first opened the debate themselves. Rarely if ever does this occur before a policy disaster occurs. And there is the rube.
Alumnus William A. Dorman has been a professor of journalism and government at Sac State since 1967. Dorman won the statewide Wang Family Excellence Award in 2002. This article is based on his essay that will appear in the book Leading to the 2003 Iraq War: The Global Media Debate. A complete copy of the essay is available by e-mailing Dorman at dormanw@csus.edu. |
