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Date Posted: 11:45:41 06/12/03 Thu
Author: Lloyd
Author Host/IP: bi-01pt1.bluebird.ibm.com / 129.42.208.186
Subject: Those times when news people go "ooops" and we never hear it

Just read this yesterday in the Washington Post, for some reason the retractions are always on the back pages:

A Small Correction Is In Order
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 11, 2003; 8:35 AM


We feel robbed!

All those heart-rending stories about zillions of precious artifacts being looted in Iraq, all that dramatic footage of valuables being carried off from the ransacked museum – and the story goes pffttt!

We're used to journalists being misled in the famous fog of war, but this is ridiculous.

Everyone in journalism makes mistakes, especially routine mistakes – the misspelled name, the mangled title, the wrong date. In this case, though, the press told us that, in a crushing loss for western civilization, 170,000 artifacts were stolen.

The actual number: 33.

Yes, some of the booty was later returned, but 169,967 items? Maybe Don Rumsfeld was right that TV kept showing the same vase being carried away over and over.

Most of the collection, it seems, was hidden in a secret vault.

In the span of a few days, the Hartford Courant, the Wall Street Journal and the BBC reported that the original accounts were way overblown. The actual number of missing items was 3,000, the Beeb said. "Perhaps only a few thousand," said the Journal.

On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times was still going with 3,000, while the New York Times ran a wire that pegged the losses at "fewer than 50 items." Monday's Washington Post article went with the 33 figure:

"The world was appalled. One archaeologist described the looting of Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities as 'a rape of civilization.' Iraqi scholars standing in the sacked galleries of the exhibit halls in April wept on camera as they stood on shards of cuneiform tablets dating back thousands of years.

"In the first days after Baghdad fell to U.S. forces, condemnation rained down on U.S. military commanders and officials in Washington for failing to stop the pillage of priceless art, while tanks stood guard at the Ministry of Oil. It was as if the coalition forces had won the war, but lost an important part of the peace and history.

"Apparently, it was not that bad."

Apparently.

But what about everyone else? We're sure various news outlets have mentioned it, but certainly not with enough frequency to correct the impression left by the earlier hyped reports. This hasn't exactly been a staple of cable TV. The news business has just sort of moved on without even murmuring an apology.

In Salon, Andrew Sullivan uses the occasion to slam the NYT:

"Back on April 27 of this year, the Times' cultural critic, Frank Rich, weighed in on the calamity of the alleged ransacking of the National Museum in Baghdad. Rich opposed the war to liberate Iraq, preferring that Saddam stay in power if that's what it meant to oppose the Bush administration. But he really let rip when in the aftermath of the liberation, the National Museum appeared to be looted. Original press reports cited the loss of 170,000 priceless artifacts. Of course, even as Rich conceded in his column, '[t]here is much we don't know about what happened this month at the Baghdad museum, at its National Library and archives, at the Mosul museum and the rest of that country's gutted cultural institutions.' We had no inventory of what had been lost, no reliable account of where the treasures might have been stored, how widespread the looting was, and so on. The situation in Baghdad was chaotic.

"But Rich had an administration to bash. And in the wake of this extraordinary military victory, it was vital for left-wing ideologues to find something – anything – with which to denigrate the liberation. Rich had found his cause celebre. And boy did he unload:

"'Let it never be said that our government doesn't give a damn about culture. It was on April 10, the same day the sacking of the National Museum in Baghdad began, that a subtitled George W. Bush went on TV to tell the Iraqi people that they are 'the heirs of a great civilization that contributes to all humanity.' And so what if America stood idly by while much of the heritage of that civilization – its artifacts, its artistic treasures, its literary riches and written records – was being destroyed as he spoke? . . . '

"It was too tempting a target. When you're a Manhattanite culture-macher like Rich, the one thing you know is that you're smarter, more civilized and more intelligent than anyone who might ever call himself a Republican, let alone the mindless hicks now running the country."

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