Comment by kaffeemitsahne | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kaffeemitsahne | Hacker News Reader

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I can give an example from the New York Times relating to the Iraq War, I took it from wikipedia [1]:

In the buildup to the 2003 war, the New York Times published a number of stories claiming to prove that Iraq possessed WMD. One story in particular, written by Judith Miller, helped persuade the American public that Iraq had WMD: in September 2002 she wrote about an intercepted shipment of aluminum tubes which the NYT said were to be used to develop nuclear material.[83] It is now generally understood that they were not intended (or well suited) for that purpose but rather for artillery rockets.[84] The story was followed up with television appearances by Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice all pointing to the story as part of the basis for taking military action against Iraq.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destr...

That was not "the media is lying". Miller used Bush administration sources and confirmed with an Iraqi source that turned out to be the source of the Bush info. Its disputed whether she was misled by one or both of these sources or perhaps one of the sources misled the other. That the administration would rely on this reporting, rather than their own CIA which was calling it into question, is a reflection on their deception not the media's.

It was bad reporting that was compounded by the editors not pushing back, as the article you cite goes on to say.

American media mostly got the story wrong, because they trusted the American government to be honest. But a lot of foreign media didn't get the story wrong, because they didn't blindly trust the American government.

I don't see being lied to as much of an excuse. It's their job to be skeptical, and they chose not to be.

Yeah, it's always the story so old, it could have a college degree by now.

The NYT got something wrong! 17 years ago! And that's why... OP no longer believes in globular world theory?

MSM takes the same stance any time the US wants to go to war and, each time, the country invaded ends up worse off than it was under the dictator they had before.

It took the NYTs over 50 years to admit their/Walter Duranty's denial of the Holodomor was bullshit. Who is to say this is the only time a lie might go unchallenged in American media for decades?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_the_Holodomor#Walter...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty

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