You call that journalism?

[andrewducker]

"As far as I personally was concerned, there came a point with the presentation of the so-called evidence, with the moment when Colin Powell sat down at the UN General Assembly and unveiled what he said was cast-iron evidence of things like mobile, biological weapon facilities and the like...

"When I saw all of that, I thought, well, 'We know that Colin Powell is an intelligent, thoughtful man, and a sceptical man. If he believes all this to be the case, then, you know, he's seen the evidence; I haven't.’

"Now that evidence turned out to be absolutely meaningless, but we only discover that after the event. So, you know, I’m perfectly open to the accusation that we were hoodwinked. Yes, clearly we were."

That's Jeremy Paxman, who is generally considered to be one of the tougher people at the BBC.

From this, which is well worth reading

Comments

[meihua.livejournal.com]

I <3 media lens. :D They have an axe to grind, but I don't really disagree.

[andrewducker]

Yeah - I am sceptical of them in general (as with all media), but they do turn up good stuff.

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

I have no patience for the reinvention of history that says "no-one questioned that there were WMD in Iraq, how were we to know that the US and British governments were distorting the evidence and they weren't really there". It's wholly bogus - for a start, I remember reading a Guardian editorial the day after Powell's presentation that exposed the "evidence" for the house of cards that it was.