Our Gullible National Media

Excerpts from Glenn Greenwald regarding our hopelessly complicit national media (which just reinforces my decision to stop watching television altogether):

I had what I consider to be an illuminating discussion this morning with Jeffrey Schneider, Senior Vice President of ABC News, concerning the story published (and broadcast) by ABC's Brian Ross and Christopher Isham on Monday. That story claimed that "Iran has more than tripled its ability to produce enriched uranium in the last three months" and therefore "Iran could have enough material for a nuclear bomb by 2009."

...My principal criticism of the ABC story was that it was exclusively predicated on what ABC vaguely described only as "sources familiar with the dramatic upgrade." It did not include a single other piece of information about the identity of the "sources" who were making such dramatic, consequential, and potentially war-inflaming claims -- not even whether they were government or private sources, American or Iranian (or some other nationality), or whether they have any history that evinces a desire for regime change in or war against Iran. For that reason, the story seemed worthless, given that it was impossible for the reader to assess the credibility of the assertions.

...Schneider began by explaining that decisions about the use of anonymous sources in a story such as this one are "approved at very high levels" at ABC News. The sources for this specific story are, he claimed, ones with whom ABC has a "long relationship" and are ones they "find credible." He said that both ABC News itself and these specific reporters have proven "over a very long period of time" that they are reliable and credible journalists. He emphasized on several occasions that after I wrote my post on Tuesday, it was announced that Ross had been awarded a Peabody for a story he worked on last year. He said he found that "ironic" and specifically requested that I include Ross's new prize in whatever I wrote.

...In response to my central point -- that a story of this magnitude and potential impact should not be passed on without at least some information enabling an assessment of the credibility of the sources (or, at the very least, should include an explanation as to why such information was being concealed) -- Schneider's response was that there is a way for the reader to assess the credibility of the story. Namely, because ABC News and the reporters in question have "proven over a long period of time" that they are "very reliable" (Brian Ross won a Peabody Award), the fact that they have assessed this story as credible is, by itself, sufficient to render it newsworthy.

...Many Americans lack that trust -- not because of anything ABC News specifically did or did not do (like most news outlets, they do have journalists who have done good investigative work, including Ross). Instead, it is because, throughout the Bush presidency (and even before), the national American media as a whole has been extraordinarily gullible, if not outright complicit, in disseminating all sorts of patent falsehoods under the guise of unidentified agenda-driven sources.

...And at least one key reason for that distrust is both clear and compelling. Many Americans who more or less did trust the judgment of the country's most respectable media outlets were severely betrayed, when they supported an invasion of a sovereign country based exclusively on patently false claims that were uncritically though aggressively disseminated by the American press. For that reason, distrust of the media has been substantially heightened, and that is so particularly when it comes to stories -- like the ABC News one here -- that bolster the Bush administration's warnings of a "grave threat" posed by whatever country happens to be The New Nazi Enemy of the Month.

... UPDATE: Atrios points to the first of what I imagine will be many examples today rebutting the entitlement of trust touted by ABC News (and again, ABC is by no means unique, merely illustrative). And just to preempt the inevitable response, disgraceful incidents like the Jessica Lynch Fraud are not mere "mistakes" which "everyone makes" and therefore can just be corrected and then forgotten afterwards.

Instead, such incidents reflect a fundamental defect in how national journalists operate -- fueled by excessive, really mindless, trust in people who are not trustworthy, but instead are using them. And because they see those incidents only as isolated mistakes reflective of nothing, nothing ever changes.