FAIR-L
Fairness Accuracy In Reporting
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ACTION ALERT:
ABC's Weapons Scoop Turns Up Empty
April 29, 2003
On April 26, ABC's World News Tonight led with a major scoop. Anchor
Claire Shipman announced at the top of the broadcast, U.S. troops
discover chemical agents, missiles, and what could be a mobile laboratory
in Iraq. An ABC News exclusive. But ABC's exclusive, as it turns out,
appears to be false.
The April 26 report began: The U.S. military has found a weapons site 130
miles northwest of Baghdad that has initially tested positive for chemical
agents. Among the materials there, 14 55-gallon drums, at least a dozen
missiles and 150 gas masks. Correspondent David Wright explained,
Preliminary tests showed it to be a mixture of three chemicals, including
a nerve agent and a blistering agent. Wright added that an Army
lieutenant says the tests have an accuracy of 98 percent.
While expressing some reservations, Wright called it by far the most
promising find in the search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction,
especially since it included what his military source told him looks like
a mobile laboratory.
Perhaps somewhat self-consciously, ABC followed Wright's report with a
short segment about weapons claims that have turned out to be false
alarms. But ABC continued to pump the story the next day, with Wright
appearing on This Week to explain that what may turn out to be a very
significant find are these mobile laboratories, which appear to have a
pumping apparatus as well as machinery to mix chemicals.
The story led World News Tonight again on Sunday, as anchor Carole Simpson
explained that for the second day in a row, some of the preliminary tests
have come back positive for chemical agents.
But the report also noted one new development: the arrival of a Mobile
Exploitation Team (MET Bravo), which conducts its own testing of suspected
weapons sites. When those tests were done, the story had changed
significantly. According to an April 28 report in the New York Times, the
MET Bravo team has tentatively concluded that there are no chemical
weapons at a site where American troops said they had found chemical
agents and mobile labs. As a member of the team told the Times, the
earlier reports were wrong.
Reporters should be cautious when preliminary tests seem to confirm the
existence of banned weapons in Iraq, particularly since so many of these
initial findings have not been borne out (see FAIR Action Alert, 3/25/03).
ABC was aware of this, but still chose this story as its lead news item
for two days. On Monday, April 28, the story had seemingly crumbled. But
ABC's viewers were none the wiser: When the news was that ABC's
exclusive had washed out, there was no mention of the story on the
Monday or Tuesday broadcasts of World News Tonight.
ACTION: Encourage ABC News to set the record straight on the weapons story
it was pushing on April 26-27. Remind ABC that retractions of false
stories should be featured as prominently as the original reports, and ask
that more caution be shown in reporting government claims.
CONTACT:
ABC's World News Tonight
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Weapons of Mass Distraction
A good linked summary of the still-building saga of the already
infamous NYT Judith Miller WMD story can be found at
rationalenquirer.org. Latest development is Bush citing the same
mysterious source as Miller for the alleged last-second destruction
of Iraq's WMD's.
http://www.rationalenquirer.org/comment/archives/26.html
The Rational Enquirer - Comment - Follow Along
April 25, 2003
Follow Along
* On Monday, April 21, the New York Times publishes an unsourced and
unconfirmed front page story
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/21/international/worldspecial/21CHEM.ht
ml by Judith Miller claiming an Iraqi scientist -- or some guy in
nondescript clothes and a baseball cap -- has told an American
military team that Saddam's weapons of mass destruction were
destroyed or sent to Syria, and that Iraq was recently cooperating
with Al Qaeda. The article raises some eyebrows
http://slate.msn.com/id/2081774/ in the journalistic community, with
once source inside the Times calling it a wacky ass piece,
http://www2.observer.com/observer/pages/offtherec.asp adding that
there were real questions about it and why it was on page 1.
* Miller's wacky ass article is republished in dozens of newspapers
and web sites. Rush Limbaugh calls Miller's piece a big, huge, very
important story, focusing on the alleged Al Qaeda-Iraq
cooperation. Hours after Miller's original article makes the
rounds, the AP quotes
