With the 23rd anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq right around the corner, I still have questions about how the American press failed to challenge the government’s case for war; and, more urgently, whether journalism has learned anything from that experience.
Those questions were the focus of a conversation I had with Janine Zacharia, a veteran foreign affairs reporter and the Carlos Kelly McClatchy Lecturer in Journalism at Stanford University.
Zacharia, who previously served as Jerusalem bureau chief for The Washington Post and a State Department correspondent for Bloomberg News, said many news organizations in the early 2000s largely accepted the Bush administration’s claims about WMD’s in Iraq without nearly enough scrutiny.
“There was this feeling in Washington that everybody was kind of going along with President Bush’s and Secretary Powell’s assessment of things,” Zacharia said. “Everybody sort of got on the bandwagon.”
A few reporters did challenge the intelligence claims before the invasion, she said, most notably journalists at the now-defunct Knight Ridder Washington bureau, including Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay.
“They were the rare exceptions to that mainstream media coverage,” Zacharia said. “They were the ones who really questioned whether there was WMD in Iraq.”
After the invasion, as Operation Iraqi Freedom drifted into something uncontrolled and unrecognizable, several major outlets conducted internal reviews of their prior reporting. The New York Times, published an editor’s note in 2004 acknowledging shortcomings in its war coverage, as did the Washington Post.
A criticism we hear a lot (and one I echo) is that the press corps had become too reliant on access to government sources - publish something your source doesn’t like and maybe they don’t talk to you any more, you don’t get the next scoop, you don’t get that award, you don’t go to that cocktail party.
“Access journalism in Washington has definitely been a problem historically,” Zacharia said. “The people who give you the information you need to report are the same people you rely on for access.”
Zacharia said reporters must remain willing to challenge officials even if doing so risks damaging those relationships.
“My rule when I reported in D.C. was you just have to go for it and do the best reporting you can,” she said. “If someone complains about your story, you ask: was anything wrong in it? If not, too bad.”
The run-up to the Iraq War included months of briefings, congressional hearings and international debate, but Zacharia said the coverage often focused too much on the military buildup and not enough on deeply examining the administration’s underlying justification for war.
“Reporting was very focused on what the administration was doing; what carriers were being sent to the Gulf, what the preparation looked like, rather than investigating the justifications from the start,” she said.
After the invasion, many journalists spent years reporting from Iraq as the conflict evolved into a long and dangerous insurgency.
Zacharia herself later reported from the region and was embedded with U.S. military forces during the war. She said embedded reporting can provide valuable firsthand insight, even if critics argue it can create sympathy toward the troops reporters are traveling with.
“For that phase of the battle, I would much rather have reporters out in the field seeing what’s happening,” she said.
Two decades later, Zacharia said journalism has become more skeptical of government claims during wartime, but the modern media environment has introduced new challenges.
Competition to break news has intensified dramatically since the early 2000s, she said.
“In the ’90s it was Reuters, the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse racing to get the headline out,” Zacharia said. “Now you have the entire internet racing against you.”
Social media and citizen journalism can sometimes provide valuable on-the-ground information, but they also make verification far more difficult. News organizations now devote significant resources to verifying videos and images circulating online, particularly during conflicts.
Another concern, she said, is the shrinking number of foreign correspondents covering major global events.
“Foreign correspondence is not valued in this country the way it ought to be,” Zacharia said. “Think about the implications of what’s happening in Iran right now, the impact on the global economy, energy markets, and American troops, and yet we don’t have sustained coverage in many of these places.”
As tensions escalate across the Middle East, she said journalists should focus on maintaining skepticism and ensuring reporting extends beyond political narratives in Washington.
“You have to get as close as you can to the action,” Zacharia said. “Ask for evidence. And when there isn’t evidence, frame that clearly for readers.”
She also warned against covering conflicts primarily through a domestic political lens.
“This story cannot just be covered as ‘is Trump up or down today?’” she said. “What’s happening in the region right now is enormous.”
Before ending the interview, Zacharia emphasized the importance of journalism - particularly foreign reporting - to a functioning democracy.
“People who do foreign affairs coverage and war correspondence are really good people trying to do a good job,” she said. “This work is essential for our democracy.”