Molly Ivins July 9AUSTIN, Texas — Since I wrote an extremely indignant column a few weeks ago based on bad information — the alleged use of nerve gas by American troops during the Vietnam War — it seems to me I owe readers a sort of second-degree apology. I was so horrified by the accusation myself that I waxed wroth on the subject without questioning the story. My apologies to all. I didn't buy the story because it came with a Time-CNN pedigree. It was, rather, the reporter on the story — Peter Arnett, a veteran war correspondent — and the apparent confirmation by Adm. Thomas Moorer that convinced me it was legit. It now turns out that we got a version of Moorer's remarks edited so as to reinforce the premise of the story rather than his full, cautious response. I have no idea what happened to Arnett here, but I do not think his having bitten on one bad story should destroy a remarkable career. Arnett has seen more combat than anyone in the American military, since he has covered war nonstop for more than 30 years. You may recall CNN's astonishing live broadcast from Baghdad on the first night of the Persian Gulf War; Arnett was the guy calmly identifying the caliber and type of the incoming rockets and shells by their sound. The folks at CNN did exactly what journalists should do when they make a mortifying, humiliating mistake: They retracted and apologized. To read this as some dire liberal plot against the American military — a la Pat Buchanan, et al. — seems to me absurd beyond belief. If one can point to a cause for this horrific error, it was the desire for a "hot" story to lead off a new TV magazine program, causing several people who should have known better to forget the old saw "If you haven't got it, don't go with it." A journalistic bias against the military this does not prove. For one thing, you can't make a living the way Arnett has if you're anti-military. For another thing, the old "bias" accusation once again assumes that the military in Vietnam were "parfit, gentil knights." Sorry to dredge up all these old horrors, but My Lai, "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it," and the rest of the endless litany of agony argue against that. I thought we had long since agreed that we asked many good and brave men to fight and die in a stupid, reprehensible war. What happened was not their fault. We can blame LBJ, JFK, Richard Nixon, arrogance, stupidity, hubris, anti-communist hysteria, whatever. There it is. The results were not pretty. And we deeply corrupted our own military in the course of that war. This being a season of discontent with the media, let me make my own position clear: I think we stink. Some of the stench is pretty much what "everybody says" it is: corporate ownership and increased pressure for ratings and profits. Some of it is letting kids loose without training. In journalism, the sins of omission always outweigh the sins of commission.
We drop everything else and rush to put all our resources into the ratings-grabber. But what we don't cover, what we leave untold, is what will cost you money and justice and quality of life and a decent education for your kids in the years to come. But where in all the recent examination of conscience by the media is the Big One — what we have done to Bill Clinton? I keep waiting for it to come, that giant Emily Litella Moment — "Oh. Never mind." It should have come when the Paula Jones case was dismissed. It should have come when even Kenneth Starr couldn't find anything in Whitewater to indict the Clintons on. It should have come after Steven Brill's merciless expose of our revolting performance in the Early Monica Era. But if you read or heard only the media's reporting of Brill's expose, you would never have guessed it was about the media's performance. We certainly reported Brill's argument that Starr has broken the law by his leaking. And we certainly pointed out that there were a few factual errors in his 28-page indictment. But did we report that the indictment was of us? No. My own attitude about minor errors of fact is not strictly orthodox. In journalism school, we learn that if a guy tells you his name is Smith and it turns out to be spelled Smythe (those tricky Smythes), you should practically go kill yourself. Yes, I agree that anything that can be checked should be checked and even that the least you can do is spell the guy's name right. But I also think that all human endeavor is subject to error. Assume there are something in the neighborhood of 250,000 facts printed in any major daily newspaper on a given day. Since nobody is perfect, you have to assume a couple of them will be wrong. It will be 27 percent, not 28 percent; the guy who died was 78, not 77; the getaway car was turquoise, not blue. None of those mistakes should have been made, but they're not the end of the world, either. That's why good newspapers have a standing "Corrections" box on Page 2 or 3. When you make a mistake, you fix it; you say you were wrong, and you get it right. But that's not as important as, say, ignoring the corruption of American politics by corporate special interests. I spend much of my life verifying information. I have a terrific research assistant who spends all his time doing just that. Nevertheless, as regular readers know, every couple of months I have to run a correction under the standing subhead "Crow Eaten Here" (a healthy habit I copied from Dave McNeely of the Austin American-Statesman). To me, it's a lot less embarrassing that I spelled a name wrong than that I wrote a whole column based on bad information and wasn't bright enough to question it. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 1998 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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