NY Times Public Editor Calls Out Paper’s Own ‘Flawed’ Iraq Coverage

New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan has shown to be remarkably candid about issues with Times coverage of certain issues, and over the weekend she did it again with a somewhat apologetic take on the paper’s coverage of Iraq, both now and back in the run-up to war.

In fact, Sullivan opens her piece like this: “The lead-up to the war in Iraq in 2003 was not The Times’s finest hour. Some of the news reporting was flawed, driven by outside agendas and lacking in needed skepticism. Many Op-Ed columns promoted the idea of a war that turned out to be both unfounded and disastrous.”

Sullivan acknowledged that readers “have good reason to be wary” when it comes to trusting the Times on its current Iraq coverage, and said that while lots of pro-intervention voices are being heard in the New York Times, “on the Op-Ed pages and in the news columns, there have been very few outside voices of those who opposed the war last time, or those who reject the use of force now.”

She also believes that while it’s great the Times is able to get quotes from high-up government sources, “there has not been enough effort to challenge and vet the views of these government sources.” She did note, however, that some of the paper’s own columnists have spoken out strongly against intervention this go-around.

[h/t Salon]
[image via Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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