PHILADELPHIA — There’s nothing intrinsically surprising about a
veteran war correspondent, in mid-fulmination about Iraq, to say
that the United States is deservedly hated by the rest of the
world.
It’s what one would expect from Robert Fisk or dozens of other
European journalists. Or, for that matter, from writers for liberal
U.S. magazines such as the Nation or Harper’s,
which have long seen our claims to have a noble, moral foreign
policy as a ruse to cover up brutal Realpolitik.
But it’s not the sort of public declaration one would expect
from a high-profile reporter for the most powerful American
newspaper — especially at a time when that paper, which insists
it’s a champion of thoughtful, nonpartisan journalism, faces more
criticism than ever that it’s often an echo chamber for strident
liberalism.
That’s why even now — after Howell Raines, after years of bile
from Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd, even after the attempt to turn
an old missing-explosives story into an election-eve bombshell —
it was astounding to hear Chris Hedges of the New York
Times go off Saturday morning at a forum held here as part of
the annual conference of the Association of Opinion Page
Editors.
Hedges was invited to talk about his book, War Is a Force
That Gives Us Meaning. Many editors on hand were probably
aware of Hedges’ notoriety for a commencement address he gave in
May 2003 at a small Illinois college in which he was booed off the
stage for criticizing the war on Iraq. But no one expected Hedges
to offer up an indictment of American foreign policy as sweeping
and angry as our strongest Arab critics or nastiest MIT linguistics
professor.
“We’re absolutely reviled around the world, as we should be,”
Hedges said. “Our only friends are war criminals” — a reference,
he explained, to Ariel Sharon and Vladimir Putin.
America’s amoral, bloodthirsty ways and the hate they generate
would be much plainer to the American people, Hedges said, if only
so many journalists weren’t “trapped” by the government’s war
clichés and oriented to a Washington-centric view of the
world. This group, he said, included his bosses at the
Times.
“There was absolutely no interest in my newspaper in presenting
the views of the French” as the U.S. moved toward war in Iraq,
Hedges said. Instead, there was lots of guffawing over anti-French
jokes, which he termed “racist.”
Who knew? The New York Times’ newsroom is a place where
mockery of France is so severe that a heroic, hardy, death-defying
war correspondent would consider it tantamount to workplace
harassment.
To be fair to Hedges, his critique of U.S. foreign policy under
Bill Clinton was quite sharp as well. Also, some of his arguments
about the overreach and hypocrisy of our foreign policy were
basically more heated versions of criticisms put forward by Cato
Institute scholars, Pat Buchanan, and other administration skeptics
without a partisan ax to grind. And to Hedges’ credit, he cited
specific examples and first-person reporting in making his case
against Bush and the Pentagon, unlike the glib barbs favored by
Krugman and Dowd.
Still, what’s most relevant here isn’t so much Hedges’ views but
that the New York Times is so accommodating to a reporter
who encourages the Bush-is-our-Hitler school of thought. Yes,
Hedges acknowledged that his strongly held views made him “a giant
headache for my editors.” But while he’s no longer based in the
Middle East, he continues to write regularly about national
politics and war-related topics — and not for the op-ed page.
Whatever one’s views, it seems reasonable for the Bush
administration to assume that Hedges’ reporting hasn’t been and
won’t ever be fair — convinced as he is that America is run by a
messianic idiot.
But then it seems reasonable for abortion opponents or gun
owners to assume that newsrooms full of pro-choice Second
Amendment-haters haven’t been and won’t ever be fair. Yet
newsrooms, from the New York Times down, reject that
argument, too.
At least one speaker at the editors’ conference thought this
argument was reasonable.
The Times’ ombudsman.
At a Friday panel discussion, I asked Times Public
Editor Daniel Okrent whether he thought it was a problem that polls
showed reporters and editors are overwhelmingly Democrats and
liberals. Sure, he said — “We have to have intellectual
diversity.”
Unfortunately, Okrent wasn’t around when Hedges vented. But
Okrent may have had Hedges (and Hedges’ bosses) in mind at another
point in his remarks.
“Arrogance has gone off the charts at the Times more
than any other place,” he said.
No kidding.
