Judith Miller redux? (The Iran version)

[marmar]

from Democracy Now!:


NYT Scrutinized for Report on Hezbollah Training Iraqis in Iran

The New York Times is coming under criticism for publishing an article based solely on unnamed sources suggesting that the Lebanese group Hezbollah is training Iraqi militants inside Iran. The article by Michael Gordon was published on Monday, one day after Iraqi government spokesperson Ali al-Dabbagh said Iraq has no hard evidence of Iranian support of insurgents in Iraq. John Stauber of PR Watch said Gordon’s article is “reminiscent of the horrendous errors of judgment and bad journalism committed by Michael Gordon, Judith Miller and others at the New York Times who turned the paper into a conduit for phony stories that sold the war in Iraq.” Retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner said he feels the article in Monday’s Times is “part of a strategic communications plan.”

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/5/6/headlines

[burythehatchet]

1. What this shows is that

Judy Miller was not an independent actor, but just a tool. The marionettes who control the Times, WaPo, and all of mass media are the ones who should be held to account.

[marmar]

2. Agreed.....

n/t

[spanone]

3. these 'kind' of stories are appearing with regularity....it's called priming the masses for war

with the complicity of the media

[Supersedeas]

4. one wonders what McCain secrets the Times is withholding until after the election

[NNN0LHI]

5. Here is the NYT "reporter" everyone had best keep their eye on

http://www.indypendent.org/?p=812

John Burns

Former tennis partner of George Bush Sr. and the Times’ longtime Baghdad bureau chief, Burns will be leaving Iraq in the summer of 2007 to serve as London bureau chief. In an interview with Charlie Rose of PBS in February 2007, Burns blithely moved from conversations about his own curly hair to the grim fact that nearly every barber in Baghdad was dead, the victims of unrelenting sectarian violence.

In answering the question, ‘Was the Iraq war lost?’ Burns recently told CSPAN, “I think the honest answer is that we – that we don’t know, that the situation is extremely complicated, that it looks pretty dire, but all hope is not exhausted.”