Editor:
Anyone who read the Cox News Service account of the historic June 16 hearing held by Representative John Conyers on the significance of the “Downing Street Memo” (and those that have followed and buttressed it) would have virtually no idea of what thoseof us who watched the hearings on C-Span saw and heard, let alone of who testified at the hearing, why it had to be held in a cramped basement room, or why those memoranda appear to point to impeachable crimes. To its credit, the Chronicle printed the text of the Memo along with the drab little article, but it did so on page A20 and provided none of the essential context needed by readers to understand its dynamite implications.
Now that public pressure is forcing the mainstream U.S. media to pay attention to a document published over a month ago in the Times of London, pundits at the leading newspapers and network news are justifying their tardiness by echoing the White House claims that the evidence of deliberate deception by the Bush and Blair administrations is miraculously absurd and stale news at the same time, and that anyone who pays it heed is a paranoid wingnut or, more inconsequentially, an anti-war activist. In its failure to adequately cover this explosive story, the U.S. media shares culpability with the twin administrations which deceived the world into an ever-deepening disaster from which there now appears no escape.
Sincerely,
Gray Brechin
