Pushing War is Bad Journalism : The New York Times Confesses
NEW YORK (AFP) - Institutional failures, not individual ones, allowed the New York Times' pre-Iraq (news - web sites) war coverage to be manipulated by people bent on pushing the United States into war, the paper's ombudsman said.
"Some of The Times's coverage in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq was credulous; much of it was inappropriately italicized by lavish front-page display and heavy-breathing headlines," Public Editor Daniel Okrent said in the paper's Sunday issue.
"The Times's flawed journalism continued in the weeks after the war began, when writers might have broken free from the cloaked government sources who had insinuated themselves and their agendas into the pre-war coverage," Okrent said.
