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A Cold War Brewing Between The Press And White House Over Iran?

By Vaughn Ververs

April 20, 2006 / 12:47 PM EDT / CBS News

(AP / CBS)

Is the media sending a message to the Bush administration when it comes to dealing with Iran? Writing in the Boston Phoenix, Mark Jurkowitz thinks so. Jurkowitz sees recent stories in the New Yorker and The New York Times as a way for the press to signal it will be far more aggressive in questioning any possible military action against Iran than it was in the run-up to the war in Iraq. The New Yorker piece laid out plans for the possible use of nuclear weapons to stop Iran's own nuclear development program. The Times story threw cold water onto claims about Iran's ability to do so in the near future, asserting that country is "years away" from being able to build a nuclear bomb. Here's what Jurkowitz sees:

On one level, the Times story seemed timed to cool a dramatic onset of war jitters. But it may also have sent a crucial message about how — in the wake of their haunting failure to examine the administration's rationale for the war in Iraq — the mainstream media will treat another effort to push military action against another Mideast state on the grounds that it will soon possess WMD.
The run-up to the 2003 Iraq war did major damage to the reputation and credibility of the Times. Ultimately, the paper offered its readers a formal mea culpa for its failure to scrutinize dubious claims about Saddam Hussein's WMD and saw one of its stars — reporter Judy Miller — discredited for her role in hyping those claims.
On April 13, the paper seemed to be signaling that it, and perhaps the rest of the media, would treat a run-up to war with Iran with the kind of aggression and skepticism that was missing three years ago.

It's an interesting examination of the possible consequences of the press collectively taking such an aggressive stance, you should read the whole thing. What do you think, is the press trying to assuage its guilty feelings about WMDs by being very suspicious of the administration's claims on Iran?

[On a side note, there has been plenty said about Seymour Hersh's reliance on un-named sources in his New Yorker story. We actually went through the article and, by our count, there are 20 different un-named sources cited in it compared to six who were identified. Does that make any difference in how much trust you put into it?]