Does ABC News Have Blood On Its Hands? A Tragic Rush To Judgment?
Was ABC News manipulated in 2001 to advance the Bush administration’s now well reported hunger to invade Iraq even though it had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington? Questions are increasingly being raised now about ABC’s reporting of the anthrax attacks in 2001now that the U.S. government scientist who was reportedly the Fed’s key suspect apparently committed suicide last week before the FBI could move in.
Back in 2001, ABC News, in a series of reports, quoted several “sources” who effectively linked the anthrax that had been mailed to several well known and less known people in the U.S., to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Does ABC News Have Blood On Its Hands?
The protracted Iraqi war has now claimed the lives of more than four thousand U.S. soldiers, an unknown number of Iraqis and seriously wounded tens of thousands of U.S. troops. So, it is vital that ABC News tells the American public how it came by its anthrax stories to see just who it was who manipulated the network and for what purpose?
Salon’s Glenn Greenwald, who has been covering this story for some time, raised many questions in a posting a few days ago—and again today.
Academic journalist Jay Rosen amplified them on his own blog–as did journalist Dan Gillmor on his.
The postings point out that ABC News need not protect “sources” who lied.
Here are three key questions for ABC News that Rosen ,Gillmor and others are asking ABC to respond to:
1. Sources who are granted confidentiality give up their rights when they lie or mislead the reporter. Were you lied to or misled by your sources when you reported several times in 2001 that anthrax found in domestic attacks came from Iraq or showed signs of Iraqi involvement?
2.It now appears that the attacks were of domestic origin and the anthrax came from within U.S. government facilities. This leads us to ask you: who were the “four well-placed and separate sources” who falsely told ABC News that tests conducted at Fort Detrick showed bentonite in the anthrax sent to Sen. Tom Daschle, causing ABC News to connect the attacks ti Iraq in multiple reports over a five day period in October, 2001?
3.A substantially false story that helps make the case for war by raising fears about enemies abroad attacking the United States is released into public debate because of faulty reporting by ABC News. How that happened and who was responsible is itself a major story of public interest. What is ABC News doing to re-report these events, to figure out what went wrong and to correct the record for the American people who were misled?
As I said, these are some key questions being raised by Rosen, Gillmor and others. They seem to me to be fair and they also seem to me to be deserving of serious answers from ABC News!
