NYT Admits: We Have Not “Aggressively Challenged” Obama on Drones
►http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/185-general/52004-nyt-admits-we-have-not-qaggressively-challengedq-obama-on-drones
By Common Dreams Staff
Common Dreams
October 15, 2012
Media outlets are not informing US citizens well on the implications of Washington’s drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. In these fragile states, drone strikes are deepening resentment towards the US and undermining politics. Margaret Sullivan, public editor of the New York Times, has acknowledged that the paper has not challenged the use of drones. The Columbia Human Rights Clinic released a report that questions the quality of available of information and the sloppy approach to the question of who are the casualties.
Margaret Sullivan, the public editor at the New York Times, admitted over the weekend that the influential paper has not been strong enough in its reporting on the CIA’s lethal overseas drone program and that the general uncritical nature of national media coverage has fueled widespread acceptance among the public of a program that kills untold numbers of innocent civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere.
Though crediting Time’s reporters for bringing important information to light regarding Obama’s drone and targeted assassination programs, Sullivan acknowledged the paper has “not be without fault” in their efforts to push back against the administration’s obfuscations and unsubstantiated claims about who and how many are killed in reported drone strikes. Since May of 2012, she writes:
[The paper’s] reporting has not aggressively challenged the administration’s description of those killed as “militants” — itself an undefined term. And it has been criticized for giving administration officials the cover of anonymitywhen they suggest that critics of drones are terrorist sympathizers.
