UPDATE: After this story was originally published, Brian Ross (the lead ABC News reporter on the 2001 anthrax stories) offered comment via TVNewser — primarily to defend his original reporting and to contend that he was not duped by his sources. Meanwhile, CJR’s Justin Peters amplified the call for transparency from news organizations.
News organizations are accustomed to fending off demands from judges and law enforcement agencies that they reveal their confidential sources. But what happens when this demand comes from news-savvy bloggers? Currently, ABC News is facing this quandary. This blog “meme” was sparked by two noted journalism professors: Jay Rosen and Dan Gillmor, in response to Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald’s criticisms (Aug 1 and Aug 3) of ABC News’ coverage of the 2001 anthrax scare.
In fall 2001, five people died and 17 were injured when someone sent a series of anthrax-laced letters to several members of Congress and prominent journalists. Last week, a leading suspect in the case (Army biodefense expert Bruce Ivins, 62) apparently committed suicide. According to news reports, Ivins’ lawyer said Justice Department officials had informed them of their intention to indict Ivins for the anthrax murders.
Greenwald noted that at the time, ABC ran a series of stories citing “well-placed” anonymous sources implicating Iraq in the attack. According to Greenwald, these stories contributed to the misinformation that fueled public support for the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Greenwald argued that apparently ABC’s “well-placed” sources lied, thus forfeiting their right to anonymity.
What’s remarkable is that Rosen and Gilmor turned Greenwald’s argument into a blog meme by asking other bloggers to pose these three “vital questions” to ABC:
- Was ABC lied to or misled by its sources when it reported several times in 2001 that anthrax found in domestic attacks came from Iraq or showed signs of Iraqi involvement? (Sources who are granted confidentiality give up their rights when they lie or mislead the reporter.)
- Who were the “four well-placed and separate sources” who falsely told ABC News that tests conducted at Fort Detrick showed bentonite in the anthrax sent to Sen. Tom Daschle, causing ABC News to connect the attacks to Iraq in multiple reports over a five day period in October, 2001? (It now appears that the attacks were of domestic origin and the anthrax came from within U.S. government facilities.)
- What is ABC News doing to re-report these events, to figure out what went wrong and to correct the record for the American people who were misled? (ABC’s substantially false story helped make the case for the Iraq war by raising fears about enemies abroad attacking the U.S. How that happened, and who was responsible is itself a major story of public interest.)
Most blog memes are quizzes, games, or questions that people pass around from site to site for the sake of novelty or entertainment. The creation of a blog meme in an effort to hold a news organization accountable for its reporting is an intriguing strategy that seems to have caught on with bloggers.
This isn’t limited to blogs. Commenters to current ABC News coverage of the anthrax case are also raising these questions, right on the ABC News site.
Officially, the anthrax investigation hasn’t ended, and there is plenty of “well-placed” skepticism about the case against Ivins set forth by mainstream news organizations. At least one bioweapons expert organization is calling on the DOJ to continue its investigation even if the case against Ivins is deemed conclusive — to ascertain whether Ivins acted alone.
Emerging info from current reporting indicates that ABC’s original reports were probably unsupported. Will ABC News explain what happened, revisit these key stories, and discuss the role of its reporting in the Iraq war fever of 2001? Should they? What’s your view? Please comment below.
