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11 November 2005 >> Former news producer Mary Mapes is still defiant.

Shortly before last fall’s election, Mapes was forced to resign in disgrace from CBS News after she and Dan Rather were caught peddling bogus memos intended to hurt President Bush’s chances for re-election. But Mapes still can’t figure out why people questioned her reporting:

In her first television interview since the National Guard story, Mapes sat with ABC’s Brian Ross to talk about the events surrounding the story and her book. She defended the story and asserted, “I think I’m somebody who got fired for trying to do their job in a difficult atmosphere,” adding, “I don’t think I committed bad journalism. I really don’t.”

Ross asked Mapes if she still believed the story on President Bush’s National Guard service was true and she answered, “absolutely.” She said of the Killian memos, which were used to validate the story before their authenticity came under intense scrutiny, that they have not proven to be inauthentic, adding, “I’m perfectly willing to believe those documents are forgeries if there’s proof I haven’t seen.” Ross asked Mapes if the standard ought not to have been for her to prove their authenticity, to which she responded, “I don’t think that’s the standard.”

Mapes assumes everything she sees is true, assuming it fits with her preconceived political notions. Apparently, she’s not alone in the media these days.

Many media outlets have breathlessly reported the charges of Jimmy Massey, a former Marine who became a prominent peace activist after witnessing what he says were war atrocities in Iraq. Problem is, none of the reporters who repeated his accusations ever bothered to check them out. And now that Massey’s been exposed as a fraud, it leaves a bunch of credulous reporters with egg on their faces:

For more than a year, former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey has been telling anybody who will listen about the atrocities that he and other Marines committed in Iraq.

In scores of newspaper, magazine and broadcast stories, at a Canadian immigration hearing and in numerous speeches across the country, Massey has told how he and other Marines recklessly, sometimes intentionally, killed dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians.

[...]

Each of his claims is either demonstrably false or exaggerated - according to his fellow Marines, Massey’s own admissions, and the five journalists who were embedded with Massey’s unit, including a reporter and photographer from the Post-Dispatch and reporters from The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:

Editors at some papers look back at the Massey articles and are surprised that they ran them without examining whether the claims were true or without ever asking the Marine Corps about them.

“I’m looking at the story and going, ‘Why, why would we have run this without getting another side of the story?’” said Lois Wilson, managing editor of the Star Gazette in Elmira, N.Y.

David Holwerk, editorial page editor for The Sacramento Bee, said he thought the newspaper handled its story, a question and answer interview with Massey, poorly.

“I feel fairly confident that we did not subject this to the rigorous scrutiny that we should have or to which we would subject it today,” he said.

Rex Smith, editor of the Albany (N.Y.) Times Union, said he thought the newspaper’s story about Massey could have “benefited from some additional reporting.” But he didn’t necessarily see anything particularly at odds with standard journalism practices.

[...]

“You could take any day’s newspaper and probably pick out a half dozen or more stories that ought to be subjected to a more rigorous truth test,” he said.

“Yes, it would have been much better if we had the other side. But all I’m saying is that this is unfortunately something that happens every day in our newspapers and with practically every story on television.”

11 November 2005 >> Media bias isn’t limited to the U.S., obviously. If anything, the left-wing domination of the media may be even more pronounced in Europe.

Case in point: French newsman Jean-Claude Dassier, who readily admits to skewing coverage of the recent French riots. As violence and fires raged in some 300 French cities and towns, Dassier, the general director of the French TCI news channel, was doing his best to downplay them. Why? He feared that showing images of the riots would build support for right-wing politicians. Not only did he hide certain images from the public, but he readily admits his motivation:

“Politics in France is heading to the right and I don’t want rightwing politicians back in second, or even first place because we showed burning cars on television,” Mr Dassier told an audience of broadcasters at the News Xchange conference in Amsterdam today.

“Having satellites trained on towns across France 24 hours a day showing the violence would have been wrong and totally disproportionate ... Journalism is not simply a matter of switching on the cameras and letting them roll. You have to think about what you’re broadcasting,” he said.

The American media plays similar tricks. Throughout my life, I’ve seen the horror of President Kennedy’s assassination replayed countless times—despite it happening nearly a decade before my birth—yet the horrors of people jumping from the World Trade Center towers are never shown on television, not anymore. That, I guess, might inflame passions.

In the French media, Dassier isn’t alone:

“Do we send teams of journalists because cars are burning, or are the cars burning because we sent teams of journalists?” asked Patrick Lecocq, editor-in-chief of France 2.

Once could ask the same question about terrorist attacks in Iraq, which seem designed to demoralize the American public and weaken our resolve as much as they’re designed to strike fear into the souls of Iraqis. Yet each attack ends up being the top story on the news. Could it be that political calculations are shaping news coverage here at home, too?

You’ve got to give Dassier credit for one thing: at least he owns up to his bias. Our media isn’t honest enough to do that.