Conyers vs. The Post

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Conyers vs. The Post

John Nichols
The Nation
June 19, 2005

There is painful irony in the fact that, during the same month that the confirmation of "Deep Throat's" identity has allowed the Washington Post to relive its Watergate-era glory days, that newspaper is blowing the dramatically more significant story of the "fixed" intelligence the Bush administration used to scam Congress and U.S. allies into supporting the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Last week, when the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Michigan Democrat John Conyers, chaired an extraordinary hearing on what has come to be known as the "Downing Street Memo" -- details of pre-war meetings where aides to British Prime Minister Tony Blair discussed the fact that, while the case for war was "thin," the Bush administration was busy making sure that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" -- the Post ridiculed Conyers and the dozens of other members of Congress who are trying to get to the bottom of a scandal that former White House counsel John Dean has correctly identified as "worse than Watergate."

Post writer Dana Milbank penned a snarky little piece that, like similar articles in the New York Times and other "newspapers of record," displayed all the skepticism regarding Bush administration misdeeds that one might expect to find in a White House press release.

To his credit, Conyers hit back.

In a letter addressed to the Post's national editor, the newspaper's ombudsman and Milbank, the veteran House member was blunt.

[see my previous email today for complete text of Conyers letter - jh]

The years of the Bush presidency will be remembered as a time when American media, for the most part, practiced stenography to power -- and when once-great newspapers became little more than what the reformers of another time referred to as "the kept press."

The Conyers letter, like the thousands of communications from grassroots activists to media outlets across this country pressing for serious coverage of the "Downing Street Memo" and the broader debate about the Bush administration's doctoring of intelligence prior to the launch of the Iraq war, is an essential response to our contemporary media crisis. That it had to be written provides evidence of just how serious that crisis has grown.

© 2005 The Nation