edit:
yet another peculiar omission:
Eighteen days before the invasion of Iraq began, the UK paper the Observer printed the contents of a top secret U.S. National Security Agency memo.
That NSA memo outlined surveillance of a half-dozen delegations with swing votes on the U.N. Security Council.
The memo said that the agency had started a “surge” of spying on U.N. diplomats, including wiretaps of home and office telephones along with reading of e-mails.
Major news outlets in the United States almost completely ignored the story.
At the time, the New York Times did not cover the U.N. spying revelation at all.
When asked why, deputy foreign editor Alison Smale said, “We would normally expect to do our own intelligence reporting,” Smale replied. She added that “we could get no confirmation or comment.” Smale was subsequently named managing editor of the International Herald Tribune, which is owned by The New York Times Co.
What kind of journalism is this? It would seem a story is not fit to print unless U.S. intelligence officials are willing to discuss it.
The Washington Post printed a short piece on the back page under the headline “Spying Report No Shock to U.N.”, essentially parroting the US government spin.
The Los Angeles Times published a piece emphasizing that U.S. spy activities at the United Nations are “long-standing.”
The LA Times didn’t report on the basis of the story at all, merely quoting unnamed “experts” who “suspected that it could be a forgery” — and “several former top intelligence officials said they were skeptical of the memoÂ’s authenticity.”
The UK government had arrested Katharine Gun, the source for the memo, charging her with leaking classified material. About a year later, the charges were dropped for unstated reasons.
The next day, a member of Parliament and one of BlairÂ’s former cabinet ministers, Clare Short, said that British spies did in fact closely monitor conversations of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq last year. “I have seen transcripts of Kofi AnnanÂ’s conversations.”
see http://www.fair.org/media-beat/040226.html
http://www.agrnews.org/issues/217/mediawatch.html