{"id":177763,"date":"2019-06-18T18:25:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-18T23:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/06\/18\/the-columbia-journalism-review-states-the-obvious\/"},"modified":"2019-06-18T18:25:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-18T23:25:00","slug":"the-columbia-journalism-review-states-the-obvious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/06\/18\/the-columbia-journalism-review-states-the-obvious\/","title":{"rendered":"The Columbia Journalism Review States the Obvious"},"content":{"rendered":"
They have observed that the current news coverage of the conflict between the United States and Iran is way too credulous<\/a>:<\/div>\n

With every day that passes, the drumbeat of war echoes a little more loudly through our media. Yesterday, officials in Iran said that the country will soon have produced and stockpiled more low-enriched uranium\u2014of the type used in power plants<\/a>\u2014than it is permitted to possess under the 2015 nuclear deal, which the US ditched last year. In Washington, the Trump administration moved to dispatch 1,000 American troops to the Middle East, adding to the 1,500-strong deployment it sent last month. Tensions between the US and Iran, we are told, are rising. <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Yesterday, the Trump administration declassified images<\/a> it says back up its case that Iran was behind the tanker attacks. Many outlets relayed administration claims about the images in headlines; in a tweet<\/a>, Politico said that, per the Pentagon, \u201cthe images provide ironclad evidence Iran was responsible.\u201d The third paragraph of Politico\u2019s linked story<\/a>, however, notes that \u201cnothing in the photos or accompanying documents reveal evidence of the placement of the magnetic mines on the ship.\u201d Hardly \u201cironclad,\u201d then. Last night, in an article for Task & Purpose, a military news site,<\/a> Jeff Schogol argued that \u201cnot a single US official has provided a shred of proof linking Iran to the explosive devices found on the merchant ships.\u201d Without air-tight evidence, news outlets really should not air administration claims without a heavy dose of context. \u201cPompeo\/Bolton\/Shanahan said\u201d is not enough. <\/p>\n

Again, it\u2019s hard to generalize, but US coverage of the latest Iran episode seems to be falling into some old, bad habits. In recent coverage, \u201cthe media has generally been better at treating unproven accusations by the Trump administration as just that\u2014accusations, and not facts,\u201d Trita Parsi, a researcher and founder of the National Iranian American Council, told me last night in an email. \u201cYet, on numerous occasions, there has either been a failure to push back against blatantly false assertions by Trump officials, or Trump accusations have been presented as proven facts.\u201d The problem is especially acute in headlines and tweets, Parsi notes. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have lived though journalistic fails of this sort my entire life.<\/p>\n

I don’t think that I’ve ever seen the press gets this right in my lifetime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They have observed that the current news coverage of the conflict between the United States and Iran is way too credulous: With every day that passes, the drumbeat of war echoes a little more loudly through our media. Yesterday, officials in Iran said that the country will soon have produced and stockpiled more low-enriched uranium\u2014of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[416,364,490,523,377],"class_list":["post-177763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-culture","tag-evil","tag-hack-journalism","tag-journalism","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177763"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177763\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}