NYT Again Repeating Pentagon Propaganda
NYT Again Repeating Pentagon Propaganda
Our guest blogger is Ken Gude, Associate Director of the International Rights and Responsibility Program at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
The New York Times is at it again. Reaching back into an old bag of tricks, Bush administration holdovers in the Pentagon have used the paper of record to spread false propaganda at a critical juncture in a key national security debate, this time about released Guantanamo detainees supposedly returning to terrorism. This article has just one purpose: to mislead readers about the true nature of the threat posed by released Guantanamo detainees.
Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller discards any semblance of journalism and merely serves as a conduit for unnamed Pentagon officials to claim without any supporting evidence that 74 released Guantanamo detainees are “engaged in terrorism.” The headline screams “1 in 7 Freed Detainees Rejoins Fight, Report Finds,” and the entire opening of the story presents the Pentagon figures as conclusions of fact that are being withheld for political purposes.
Not until the 17th paragraph does this key passage appear:
The Pentagon has provided no way of authenticating its 45 unnamed recidivists, and only a few of the 29 people identified by name can be independently verified as having engaged in terrorism since their release. Many of the 29 are simply described as associating with terrorists or training with terrorists, with almost no other details provided.
Got that? Bumiller admits that “only a few” can be independently verified, more than half aren’t even identified, and no details are provided about the specific accusations but not until almost the end of the story.
We know previous Pentagon efforts to link released detainees with terrorism have included those who have written op-eds or participated in films about their experience at Guantanamo as “returning to the fight.” What kind of journalism allows a reporter to write a story so clearly slanted in one direction without even a minimal effort to verify the information that forms its basis?
An accurate story using this same information would report that some Guantanamo detainees have engaged in terrorism upon release, but that most of the allegations of such activity remain unconfirmed and that previous Pentagon reports have included activity that is not normally associated with terrorism. It wouldn’t make for such a sensational headline, but it would be much more representative of the truth.
6 Responses to “NYT Again Repeating Pentagon Propaganda”
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Talk about twisting something to meet your ideological agenda. A precise headline would have been “Pentagon Report on Detainees Questionable”
May 22nd, 2009 at 5:38 amfunny, neither u nor anyone else had a problem when the NYT illegally leaked information from the Bush administration on tactics that prevented terrorist attacks & led to the capture of Islamic terrorists…and now that Bush is gone, you and others want to claim Bush-holdovers are letting out info while NEVER questioning anything that Obama and his tax-dodging, incapables do or say? Ain’t this some shit…maybe it was Bush holdover William Gates….oooooooops – when you hold over a Bush member it might be good to actually know his name – FAIL – this admin is a joke…banana republic style
oh by the way – almost all Democrats voted AGAINST funding the closure of Gitmo & almost all Dems don’t want Gitmo terrorists in the US
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:15 amThis is a complete mischaracterization of Bumiller’s perfectly balanced story. The complaint that the caveats start in paragraph 17 is a red herring. A key caveat is in the second paragraph; the 15 intervening paragraphs review the context in which the report is surfacing, and the subsequent assessment is almost entirely about reasons to to be sceptical of its conclusions, with the admirable Mark Denbeaux’s voice dominating. Far more space is devoted to showing holes in the report than to reporting its conclusions. Not a word in the story suggests that the report’s conclusions should be taken at face value.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:53 amJudith Miller all over again.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:29 amThe other gaping hole in the story is the Pentagon’s use “terrorism or militant activity” to describe what the detainees in question are supposed to have “returned to.”
Since, for example, giving money to a Hamas-linked charity (whether you know about the link or not) is sufficient to brand you as a supporter of terrorists, for the US gov’t.’s purposes, how many get swept in under the even weaker rubric of “militant activity.” The Pentagon report smells like rotten hamburger, and Bumiller bought the whole package.
May 22nd, 2009 at 12:53 pm‘This is a complete mischaracterization of Bumiller’s perfectly balanced story.’
First, I would ask you to then justify the headline, if the intent of the report is to debunk the claim?
Second, I read the article on a flight yesterday, and my reaction was exactly the same as Mr. Gude’s. So no, the story was perfectly balanced in the classic Beltway fashion: an exhaustive recitation of the contents of the report, with a couple of caveats tacked on at the end of a long piece.
The article’s intent and effect was to add a voice to the arguments against closing Guantanamo. Maybe that’s “balanced” in your mind, but you’re simply wrong in that regard.
May 22nd, 2009 at 3:56 pm