Do national media outlets deserve our blind trust on foreign policy reporting?
by Glenn Greenwald, Salon I had what I consider to be an illuminating discussion this morning with Jeffrey Schneider, Senior Vice President of ABC News, concerning the story published (and broadcast) by ABC’s Brian Ross and Christopher Isham on Monday. That story claimed that “Iran has more than tripled its ability to produce enriched uranium in the last three months” and therefore “Iran could have enough material for a nuclear bomb by 2009.” A reader had contacted Schneider, who told the reader that the post I wrote criticizing the story was “outrageous.” I thereafter emailed Schneider to request an interview about the story, and we spoke this morning for 20 minutes or so. My principal criticism of the ABC story was that it was exclusively predicated on what ABC vaguely described only as “sources familiar with the dramatic upgrade.” It did not include a single other piece of information about the identity of the “sources” who were making such dramatic, consequential, and potentially w
