Amy Goodman looked back at the media's failures on the Iraq War on HuffPost Live Tuesday, echoing the strong criticism of the media on the tenth anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq.
Ten years after the invasion, the press has admitted that it helped make a false case for the American invasion of Iraq without examining the facts. Goodman, the host of "Democracy Now!," reflected on the debacle on Tuesday, and declared the press "an extreme media beating the drums for war."
She cited a Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting study, which examined NBC, ABC, NBC and PBS' evening newscasts during the week of Colin Powell's February 5, 2003 speech to the United Nations. The report found only three out of 393 interviews done around war were with peace advocates, even though public opinion was split.
She said that the media acted as a mouthpiece for Washington officials at the start of the war, and pointed to the New York Times' coverage of a major peace protest in Washington, D.C. in October 2002 as an example. The article said that organizers were disappointed with the low numbers of people there that day, Goodman recalled, even though 100,000 to 200,000 people had shown up. She said that the reporter was there earlier in the day before protesters arrived and called in a correction about the numbers, which was never issued.
"We interviewed people there, we talked about the ridiculous Times coverage saying everyone was disappointed," Goodman said.
"The media has to stop being stenographers to power," she added.
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