PressEthic

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai held a press conference with President George W. Bush yesterday at the White House. During the question and answer session, President Bush defended the war in Iraq, and President Karzai backed him up:

Do we forget people jumping off the 80th floor or 70th floor? Who did that, and where are they now, and how do we fight them, how do we get rid of them, other than going after them? Should we wait for them to come and kill us again?

On WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show today, host Brian Lehrer played this specific sound bite. Karzai conjures up American post-September 11 rage with an impassioned ire in his voice that print is unlikely to convey accurately. However, it would have been nice if someone had tried.

A comparison of three major national papers finds varied emphasis placed on the importance of this statement, and on the parts of the conference that didn’t directly address the National Intelligence Estimate.

The Los Angeles Times ran an article yesterday and another today that mentioned the joint press conference. The only quotation from President Hamid Karzai deemed significant enough to be printed, however, was the one in which, “Karzai expressed his gratitude to Bush ‘for all you have done for Afghanistan ... from roads, to education, to democracy, to parliament, to good governance efforts, to health and to all other good things that are happening in Afghanistan.’ ”

The New York Times featured photos of the two allied leaders together above an article about the National Intelligence Estimate, but the only story on the Times website about the event was from the Associated Press. Furthermore, the only mention of Karzai’s Iraq-September 11 comment was in the transcript, also provided by the Associated Press.

The Washington Post comes closest to addressing Karzai’s statement in an A1 piece today. The story strings together parts of Karzai’s response in which he speaks of “extremist forces”, effectively diluting what he said. It also leaves out the context, so a reader wouldn’t know that Karzai is actually talking about Iraq.

Certainly a Bush ally fervently and explicitly supporting the (unsubstantiated and tenuous at best) Iraq-September 11 link that Bush has implied is newsworthy. Isn't it?