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From: FAIR-L <FAIR-L@FAIR.ORG>
To: <FAIR-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU>
Sent: 10 February 2000 00:07
Subject: [FAIR-L] ACTION ALERT: NYT on Chinese Embassy Bombing: Nothing to Report
> FAIR-L
> Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
> Media analysis, critiques and news reports
>
>
>
>
> ACTION ALERT:
> New York Times on Chinese Embassy Bombing: Nothing to Report
>
> February 9, 2000
>
> To dozens of activists who asked why the New York Times had not reported
> allegations that the U.S. deliberately targeted the Chinese Embassy in
> Belgrade during the Kosovo War, Times foreign editor Andrew Rosenthal
> responded that his paper was still investigating the charges. Of late he has
> indicated that the investigation is complete: Unable to verify the
> allegation, the Times will publish no story.
>
> The story the New York Times will not report emerged in October 1999, when
> the London Observer and the Danish paper Politiken jointly produced major
> investigative articles reporting that the U.S. military, acting without
> authorization from other NATO countries, deliberately attacked the embassy
> in May 1999 after learning it was transmitting military signals to
> Yugoslavian forces in Kosovo. The story was sourced to several well-placed
> NATO officials--unnamed, but identified by position--although NATO's
> official position was and continues to be that the strike was an accident.
>
> Despite being picked up by a number of major European newspapers, the story
> received virtually no attention from mainstream American media.
> (See http://www.fair.org/activism/embassy-bombing.html .)
>
> Last fall, after receiving numerous messages from readers asking the New
> York Times to cover the Observer's findings, Rosenthal repeatedly wrote
> personal replies saying that he had assigned reporters to look into the
> story, and would publish their findings if they could verify the Observer's
> and Politiken's reports. But in January 2000, Rosenthal wrote, in response
> to a message from a reader:
>
> "Our reporters spent a great deal of time on this. They found nothing to
> substantiate the Observer's stories. You may notice that neither has any
> other newspaper that I know of. Some carried the original Observer story,
> mostly as wire service dispatches, but none found anything there on which to
> follow up."
>
> But it is not clear how seriously the Times investigated this story.
> Although Rosenthal claims his reporters "spent a lot of time" investigating,
> Helsoe and his collaborators say they were never contacted by anyone from
> the Times. FAIR asked one of the reporters, Ed Vulliamy of the Observer's
> U.S. bureau, whether contacting the authors of an expose would be out of the
> ordinary for a journalist following up on the story: "That's the first phone
> call I'd make," Vulliamy said.
>
> A similar lack of outreach hampered the Washington Post's November 8 attempt
> at a follow-up. An article by online military columnist William Arkin,
> posted to the newspaper's website, claimed to "reconstruct" the sequence of
> events leading to the embassy bombing. (See
> http://www.fair.org/activism/embassy-follow-up.html .) But the chronology
> Arkin came up with, involving the well-known "faulty map" explanation,
> turned out to be identical to CIA director George Tenet's public account of
> the embassy "mistake." One obvious explanation for Arkin's findings is that,
> as he admitted in his column, he interviewed only American military
> officers--a curious approach to checking a story that has European officials
> pointing accusing fingers at the U.S. military.
>
> On learning that the New York Times was unable to find sources who could
> corroborate the Chinese embassy story, Helsoe expressed surprise. "If you
> ask the defense chiefs of NATO, they know. If you ask the intelligence
> chiefs, they know." Indeed, when Helsoe called in reporters John Sweeny and
> Ed Vulliamy of the London Observer last year to help him follow up on a tip
> about the embassy attack, they were readily able to find a wide variety of
> sources to corroborate the story.
>
> As FAIR reported last October, those sources included half a dozen current
> and former military and intelligence officials from NATO countries,
> including a four-star NATO general. The next month, both papers reported
> that additional military officials had come forward to confirm the story.
> Helsoe says senior Danish and British foreign ministry officials are also
> aware that the bombing was deliberate.
>
> Among mid-ranking military officers, Helsoe has said that "nearly everyone
> involved in NATO air operations or signals command knows that the embassy
> bombing was deliberate." (Pacific News Service, 10/20/99) Helsoe thus
> appears to have good reason to be surprised that the New York Times--one of
> the world's leading international newspapers, with tremendous resources and
> highly placed sources--has been unable to find officials who can verify the
> Observer's charges.
>
> The Chinese embassy bombing should not be treated lightly by journalists.
> Relations with China and with the NATO allies remain deeply affected by the
> incident. On January 27, the Chinese foreign ministry declared that Beijing
> is still dissatisfied with NATO's explanation for the attack
> (Deutsche-Presse Agentur, 1/27/00). In the U.S., China's anger was widely
> portrayed as disingenuous grandstanding. The possibility that the bombing
> might have been anything other than a well-intentioned mistake--or even that
> the Chinese have reason to be suspicious--was usually dismissed out of hand.
>
> Perhaps even more significant is the effect the Chinese embassy bombing,
> among others, has had on U.S.-European relations. Since the Kosovo war, the
> European Union has taken major steps towards developing an independent
> military identity--a trend that U.S. policymakers of both parties have
> viewed with alarm. In the U.S. media, including the New York Times, the
> motives driving Europe's recent moves have generally been characterized in
> euphemistic terms: "The Europeans' obvious military shortcomings in this
> year's war in Kosovo convinced them that they still depended far too much on
> the United States to handle trouble in their own backyard." (New York Times,
> 12/3/99)
>
> But according to Helsoe, the U.S. decision to strike targets unilaterally
> during a supposedly allied operation--including the Chinese embassy--has
> been a major factor. "This has created a lot of friction and controversy
> [between the U.S. and Europe] because the U.S. hit targets that NATO would
> not have agreed to. The U.S. going it alone without the consent of its NATO
> partners is very much a line" in the debate over a separate EU defense
> identity. As a French defense ministry official told Helsoe: "On a
> structural level, this leaves us asking questions about whether NATO can
> continue to function in such a way in the longer term."
>
> A November 1999 New York Times article (11/11/99) reported an event that
> relates to part of the story: the release of a French defense ministry
> report asserting that NATO operated under a de facto dual command structure
> during the Kosovo war. The article reported the French claim that certain
> "allied" bombing missions were actually planned and executed solely by the
> U.S.--and noted that one of these missions was the raid that "alliance
> officials said mistakenly hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade."
>
> By merely describing the content of the French report--and not even
> obtaining U.S. reaction to the allegations--the Times largely sidestepped
> the story. After all, many European officials obviously *think* the Chinese
> embassy was struck on purpose. Why do they think that? Have those countries
> communicated their concerns to the U.S.? What has the U.S. reaction been?
> Which other targets did the U.S. strike unilaterally during the Kosovo war?
> What are the ramifications for U.S.-European relations? Clearly there is a
> story here, regardless of the real reason why the embassy was bombed. As a
> leading American newspaper, the New York Times is in a unique position to
> try to answer these questions.
>
> Rosenthal justifies the New York Times' silence on the story by noting that
> other international papers also failed to publish original reports
> corroborating the Observer story. But, as FAIR pointed out last fall, many
> of those foreign papers had run prominent wire-service accounts of the
> Observer's findings. At the time, Rosenthal made a point of insisting
> that--unlike the foreign news outlets--Times journalistic standards required
> independent corroboration before the story could run. Now Rosenthal points
> to the foreign papers' lack of corroboration to support his own paper's
> silence.
>
> A newspaper that has already published a wire-service account might well see
> little need to follow up, since the Observer and Politiken themselves
> published a follow-up story a few weeks later with many new sources and
> details. The Times, however--like most of the U.S. media--has not published
> anything at all.
>
> ACTION: Please contact New York Times foreign editor Andrew Rosenthal, and
> ask him to publish the results of his reporters' investigation into the
> Chinese Embassy bombing. The bombing has caused an ongoing international
> controversy, which is newsworthy regardless of which way the Times believes
> the evidence points. Printing a report will also allow readers to judge the
> evidence for themselves--and allow them to judge whether the New York Times'
> investigation was thorough.
>
> New York Times
> Andrew Rosenthal
> Foreign Editor
> mailto:andyr@nytimes.com
>
> ----------
>
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