April 17, 2005

The Stinky Inky: As The Philadelphia Inquirer Placates Its Right-Wing Readers, Its Quality Deteriorates

updated 4/25/2005 (see below)

By Walter C. Uhler

I've been reading The Philadelphia Inquirer since I moved into the Philadelphia region in 1976. For good or bad, it's been my local paper. And although I've never confused it with the serious national newspapers—The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, and Washington Post—the Inquirer's Sports Page was what I turned to before anything else. Thus I often read the rest of the Inquirer, especially it's front-page section, its Op-ed/Commentary page and its book reviews before turning to the more serious newspapers.

Eventually I commenced writing to and for the Inquirer. My first letter was published in 1986, my first book review in 1998 and my first Op-ed in 2000. But by late 2002, due to my allegations about the Inquirer's slipshod and craven coverage of the Bush administration's lies and propaganda about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda (which were used to gain popular support for the Bush administration's illegal and immoral Hitler-like invasion of Iraq) a tacit mutual agreement was reached that I would no longer write for the Inquirer.

My formal estrangement with the Inquirer commenced nearly a year before my last Op-ed was published there. It occurred as a consequence of my letter about the deterioration of the Inquirer that was published in Z Magazine in November 2001. In Z, I wrote about "the right-wing bias that increasingly sullies the Commentary page" of the paper. I noted that its editor, John Timpane, had failed to publish my most recent Op-ed (critical of the Bush administration's unilateralism), which proved good enough for publication by a conservative, pro-defense weekly newspaper, Defense News.

I also wrote about how the increasing right-wing shift of the Inquirer coincided with the general dumbing-down of the newspaper. As examples, I cited the Inquirer's decision to discontinue it separate "Books" section, which was dumbed-down as it shrank, as well as the publication of low quality letters to the editor that never merited publication, due to their powerful and wide-ranging stupidity.

One such letter, which found its way into the newspaper, made the claim: "If we test, develop and deploy the system secretly, then we can have the security of the missile defense without escalating the arms race." As I responded in Z, "How testing, development, and deployment could remain secret (under the collective noses of an inquisitive press, government leakers, competent foreign intelligence agencies, and sophisticated spy satellites) apparently did not enter the mind of the writer—or the editors of the newspaper. (Readers merely need to consider the recent reports of the huge barge being used to float a large X-band radar to its intended destination, in order to realize how ridiculous that letter was.)

But, rather than address my criticisms directly, two editors ridiculed Z Magazine and anyone who would write to or for it. Yet, America's most brilliant and formidable intellectual, Noam Chomsky, routinely contributes to Z.

Thus, the rightward drift and accompanying deterioration of the Inquirer proceeded apace. Now, its Commentary page regularly features Op-eds by Jonah Goldberg, a syndicated right-wing lightweight with little of importance to say. And it occasionally carries the slightly more serious right-wing nonsense written by Mona Charen. Perhaps thoughtful and liberal Philadelphians should thank God that the Inquirer has spared them the vile opinions and nostrums of that loud-mouthed, blond-tressed pinhead, Ann Coulter.

But, even worse, the Commentary page often reprints the syndicated neoconservative rants of Charles Krauthhammer (who writes for, and thus besmirches, the Washington Post). Readers of Andrew Bacevich's new book, The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced By War, will find that he places much blame on such "neocons" for America's new militarism.

Moreover, Bacevich believes Krauthhammer to be one of the most extreme of the neocons. Not only has Krauthammer called collective security a "mirage," he claims that the only "alternative to unipolarlarity is chaos." Thus he advocates that the U.S. "unashamedly" lay down the rules of the world order and then be "prepared to enforce them." And, thus, he inflames that large section of the American population that shares his warmongering psychopathy.

Bacevich excoriates The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post for giving regular foreign policy commentary (respectively) to these neocons: David Brooks, Max Boot, Krauthammer and Robert Kagan. According to Bacevich, "as a direct consequence of this determined rabble-rousing, neocon views about the efficacy of American military power and the legitimacy of its use gained wide currency." And thus, by regularly carrying Krauthammer's column without balancing it with same-day thoughtful commentary to the contrary, the Inquirer's Commentary page contributed to this national disservice.

Unfortunately, two recent editorial decisions indicate that the right-wing drift/pandering/dumbing-down has further infiltrated the Inquirer's newsroom. First, the April 10, 2005 issue of the Inquirer contained the headline: "Shiites rally in Baghdad: Thousands mark anniversary of city's fall." To people who had not seen other, more accurate, descriptions of the gigantic rally the day before, the Inquirer's headline might leave them with the impression that the Shiites were celebrating the fall of Saddam Hussein.

In fact, they were. But one only needs to read other headlines about the rally -- "Demonstrators In Iraq Demand That U.S. Leave" (by The New York Times), or "Iraqis stage huge anti-US protest" (the BBC) or "Tens of Thousands of Iraqis Demand U.S. Withdrawal" (Washington Post) or "Livid Iraq Protesters Tell U.S. to Get Out" (Los Angeles Times)—to realize that the Inquirer's headline omitted the most significant reason for the protest. And although I wrote to the editors to complain that their omission raised "suspicions of bias, dishonesty or incompetence," I received no response from the news gatherers or headline writers.

Equally disturbing, however, was the discovery that the Inquirer failed to publish significant breaking news reported by its very own parent organization. On April 15, 2005, Knight Ridder ran the headline: "Bush administration eliminating 19-year old international terrorism report." The news report received significant national attention.

The actual report, Patterns of Global Terrorism, is an updated version of the 2004 report that, a year ago, required correction because it undercounted the number of terrorist incidents that occurred in 2003.

Of course, Bush administration officials denied that the undercount in the 2004 report was intentional. Yet, given that the 175 "significant " terrorist attacks in 2003 constituted "the highest number in two decades," the Bush administration could hardly have been satisfied with a such a high number that suggested the administration's global war on terrorism was not eliminating terrorism (an impossible and, thus, stupid goal to begin with), but cultivating it.

Now, the 2005 report states that 625 "significant" attacks occurred in 2004. Yet, again, the Bush administration wants Americans to believe that its refusal to release that report (and its decision to cease issuing such reports) has nothing to do with its empirical evidence suggesting that Bush's war on terrorism has been a colossal failure.

It's true that Knight Ridder's Jonathan Landay mentioned some officials who questioned the methodology behind the count. "But other current and former officials charged that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's office ordered 'Patterns of Global Terrorism' eliminated several weeks ago because the 2004 statistics raise disturbing questions about the Bush administration's frequent claims of progress in the war against terrorism."

Yet, The Philadelphia Inquirer failed to publish this article from it s parent company. Why?" Does the Inquirer fear antagonizing its many conservative readers and faith-based Bush supporters with actual, but discomfiting, facts? Does it fear retribution by way of subscription cancellations? Or are the news editors simply biased, dishonest or incompetent?

Thus: Enquiring minds would like to know
Why the Inquirer has deteriorated so.

UPDATE NOTE 4/25/05: On April 20, 2005, three days after the publication of this article, the Inquirer finally reported on the State Department's decision to cease publishing "Patterns of Global Terrorism." Although that Inquirer article came from the Washington Post and was not based on the Knight Ridder piece of April 15th, the very publication of the article should diminish suspicion that the initial failure to report the story was attributable to bias or dishonesty.


Walter C. Uhler is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Nation, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, The San Francisco Chronicle and Philadelphia Inquirer, among numerous other periodicals. His article, "Democracy or dominion?" will be republished in Annual Editions: World Politics 05/06 (McGraw Hill) scheduled for publication in April. He is President of the Russian-American International Studies Association.

waltuhler@aol.com