Strobel

Here's
an interview with Jeff Jarvis of buzzmachine.com on May 16, 2005 talking about the future of media and issues surrounding the military intervention in Iraq. Also features quotes from Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder at the end.

(12:17 / 3.7 MB / Subscribe to Interview Audio)

Click here to listen to the MP3

The Echo Chamber Project interview with Warren Strobel is now posted here.

Strobel is the Foreign Affairs Correspondent for Knight Ridder, and the primary collaborator with Jonathan Landay on their award-winning investigations into the intelligence surrounding the justifications for the war in Iraq -- described briefly here.

Simply put, Strobel and Landay are the best evidence that it was possible for journalists to dig out information that contradicted the master narrative coming from the White House, Pentagon and State Department.

Here Strobel talks about their sources, and how other major news organizations passed up on following up on important leads that their sources were trying to introduce into the public discourse.

We had people talking to us who are -- as you said "the blue collar workers" -- we tend to call them "the professionals." And when I say "professionals," I mean intelligence analysts, uniformed military and US diplomats who were expert in Iraq, expert in the Middle East, had done this stuff their whole careers. And they kept telling us over and over again that their views were being ignored, that the process was being politicized, strange things were going on, that a separate, almost alternate government was being set up, different reporting channels, and so on and so forth. And I think what happened was -- They were talking to other members of the media as well, obviously they just didn't come to Knight Ridder, but we took them a lot more seriously. We followed very aggressively on what they had to say. And in the end we found that their version of reality was more accurate than the version of reality that the White House was trying to put out.

Showing his diplomatic nature, Strobel politely asks how things might have turned out differently had other news organizations shown as much skepticism as he and his Knight Ridder team did:

And you know, it's not for me to criticize any members of the media, but you do have to wonder what would have happened if the entire media establishment in this country had taken a different stance -- from the time of let's say the end of the war in Afghanistan in December / January 2002 and the start of the invasion. Would it have changed history? Would Bush not have invaded? Would Congress not have gone along? I don't know, but it is a question worth asking.

Indeed. We'll never really know.

But other journalists have a lot to learn from how this Knight Ridder team collaborates on stories -- as well as how they're able tap into the intelligence of "the professionals" who have a much better idea what is going on, than the filtered information that is coming out from the top of the chain-of-command.

July 13th, 2004
Transcription by Volunteer Citizen Journalist Bob Reynolds

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Why don't you go ahead introduce yourself for us, and your role here at Knight Ridder.
WARREN STROBEL: Okay. I am Warren Strobel. I am the senior correspondent for foreign affairs here at the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, which means I cover foreign policy and also I work with my colleagues in covering intelligence matters.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay.
WARREN STROBEL: National security as well.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay so during the build-up to the war in Iraq. What kind of -- Well, first of all -- How do you evaluate the mainstream corporate print journalism leading up to the war in Iraq?

Thanks to wah at Quantum Philosophy for the plug over at the Daily Kos comments.

In my brief effort to start promoting the site a couple of weeks ago, I asked him to help spread the word.

I have received a couple of volunteer researchers from his plug including a "third-year measurement and statistics graduate student." Awesome.

Someone noticed my mention of lobbying journalists in the comments. I have alerted a number of investigative journalists that I interviewed about my timelines (UPDATE June 6, 2005: these timelines currently offline), but I'm not sure if anyone is using them yet.