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June 05, 2003

A bad week for the Guardian

I've posted a lot over the last couple days about the questionable nature of some supposed quotes attributed to Paul Wolfowitz, the biggest one being the story published in the Guardian yesterday alleging Wolfowitz had confirmed that the war was fought because of oil.

It turns out, however, that the Wolfowitz story isn't the only one the Guardian had to issue a correction on this week. On May 31st, they had published a story that claimed Colin Powell and Jack Straw had expressed serious doubts about the WMD intelligence the US and UK were relying on to make their case for invading Iraq. The article said that these doubts had been expressed in a meeting between the two men at the Waldorf Hotel in New York, and that transcripts of the meeting were currently being circulated among NATO diplomats.

It is not being revealed how the transcripts came to be made; however, they appear to have been leaked by diplomats who supported the war against Iraq even when the evidence about Saddam Hussein's programme of weapons of mass destruction was fuzzy, and who now believe they were lied to.

A comment in the article, noting that the meeting had been described to them by "a diplomatic source who has read a transcript of the conversation", makes it appear that the Guardian printed this story without having actually seen copies of the transcripts themselves.

Well, today, this apology and correction was added to the page where the article is posted:

In our front page lead on May 31 headlined "Straw, Powell had serious doubts over their Iraqi weapons claims," we said that the foreign secretary Jack Straw and his US counterpart Colin Powell had met at the Waldorf Hotel in New York shortly before Mr Powell addressed the United Nations on February 5. Mr Straw has now made it clear that no such meeting took place. The Guardian accepts that and apologises for suggesting it did.

The apology and clarification leave a bit to be desired when it comes to explaining what, if anything, actually did happen. It says that, according to Straw, "no such meeting" occured, but it leaves open a number of questions.

• Was there a conversation at some point between the two men (say, for example, by phone) in which they did express doubts about the reliability of the intelligence they were working with, but which was not part of any "meeting" nor took place at the Waldorf Hotel?
  
  
• If so, are the transcripts an accurate reflection of what was discussed?
  
  
• If no such conversation ever took place at all in any forum or format, then where did the transcripts come from? For that matter, if the conversation was not part of an official meeting (which even the initial story indicated might be a possiblity, since the conversation was described as having occured "in private") how would it have happened that any transcripts would have been made of the conversation at all?
  
  
• Do the transcripts even exist, or did the "diplomatic source who has read" the transcripts feed them a bunch of bull?
  
  
• Also, why did they decide to pull the Wolfowitz story, when it became apparent that it was untrue, but opted to leave the Straw/Powell story posted with the apology attached to the top? (One possible theory is that the Wolfowitz story was only published to the web, according to the correction for that piece. The Powell/Straw story may have gone into their print edition, which may make them feel more obligated to preserve a copy of it on their website, but that is pure speculation on my part)

Much has been made of the scandal at the New York Times with regards to Jayson Blair's high error rate (leading to today's resignation of Gerald Boyd and Howell Raines), but in many ways, I find this current situation with the Guardian even more serious. Even though there are only two articles involved, these articles were written by different reporters, and - had they been true - provided significant "firepower" to people who have been against the war in Iraq and are now questioning why the war was fought and if our leaders mislead us in any way on the entire WMD issue.

The Straw/Powell article indicated that two of the most important diplomats in the UK and US had serious doubts about the information they were being asked to promote in their efforts to justify the war - which would go a long way to giving credibility to those who believe that the pre-war evidence that Saddam Hussein had WMD was either exaggerated significantly or an outright lie. The Wolfowitz story, on the other hand, supported the belief many hold that the US wanted this war to get its hands on Iraq's oil, and also gives legitimacy to the idea that Blair and Bush needed to exaggerate or fabricate the WMD evidence to ensure that the war would be able to go forward. Both stories also appeared just as the questions about the WMD evidence are picking up steam, in particular in the UK, where the Guardian is published.

I've never hidden my own disapproval of the war in Iraq, nor my belief that the threat was never as grave as Bush made it out to be. But stories like these only hurt when it comes to trying to make the case. Not only do they put erronious information into the data stream (which will be almost impossible to get back out - especially the Powell/Straw story, which will be extremely attractive to those who lean more toward the "conspiracy theory" end of the spectrum), but it also makes it more difficult for other, similar, stories to be taken at face value.

Most conservatives will end up remembering that "some" stories that allegedly showed the government was misleading us about reasons for the war and the threat of WMD, but not necessarily which two. It will then be just that much easier for them to dismiss similar ideas or stories, lumping it into the category of "those stories that were discredited". I hope that the editors of the Guardian will recognize how serious unreliability and inaccuracy can be in the media and get their house back in order as soon as possible.

Posted by thorswitch at June 5, 2003 09:22 PM

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