You forgot Iraq

The New Republic's cover story on the problems facing the Washington Post covers significant ground, including the paper's problems in adjusting to the digital age, assorted internal squabbling, as well as questionable ethical lapses (including the recent joint collaboration with a conservative billionaire without appropriate disclosure) but the piece never touches on an issue that surely has contributed to the paper's loss of public trust: its reporting on the Iraq war.

As Jamison Foser previously noted the problems, as identified by former Post ombudsman Michael Getler, were multifold:

Some examples: In the summer and fall of 2002, the paper failed to record promptly the doubts of then-House Majority Leader Dick Armey. When Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to George H.W. Bush, wrote a cautionary op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, it apparently didn't strike anyone at the Post as news. ...The testimony of three retired four-star generals warning against an attack before the Senate Armed Services Committee was not covered at all. Speeches by Senator Ted Kennedy and Senator Robert Byrd that seem prescient today were not covered.

...

The list goes on. Large anti-war rallies in London and Rome went unreported the day after. In October, when more than 100,000 gathered in Washington to protest the war, the story went in the Metro section because the Post underestimated its size.

Here at Media Matters we've also documented the Post falling down on the job with regard to reporting on the war. Surely, it is a difficult time for newspapers all around, but that's no excuse for the Post's failure on this issue when so many lives have been at stake.