"I'm saying that the WMD reporting was not consciously evil. It was bad journalism, even very bad journalism"
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Okrent’s line is a scalpel aimed at a comforting conspiracy. After the Iraq invasion, “the media lied” became a shorthand that absolved everyone else: politicians, institutions, audiences hungry for certainty. By insisting the WMD reporting “was not consciously evil,” he rejects the melodrama of moustache-twirling villains and replaces it with something more indicting in its banality: systemic professional failure.
The phrase “consciously evil” is doing heavy work. It’s not a full acquittal; it’s a rerouting of blame from morality to method. Okrent is pointing at the way elite newsrooms can produce catastrophe through incentives that look, in the moment, like competence: deference to official sources, the prestige economy of access, fear of being the outlier, and the intoxicating speed of a national-security story that punishes doubt as disloyalty. “Bad journalism” sounds almost mild until you hear the echo: people died, a region destabilized, and public trust corroded.
His repetition - “bad journalism, even very bad journalism” - is editorial understatement with teeth. It mimics the cautious cadence of newsroom correction while smuggling in a moral verdict: negligence on this scale becomes a kind of ethical failure even if it wasn’t plotted as one. Context matters here. Okrent, as a public editor figure, speaks from inside the institution, which gives the sentence its sting. He’s not selling a rebellion against the press; he’s diagnosing how respectable routines can launder weak evidence into national consensus. The subtext: the danger isn’t evil reporters. It’s normal ones, doing what they’re rewarded for.
The phrase “consciously evil” is doing heavy work. It’s not a full acquittal; it’s a rerouting of blame from morality to method. Okrent is pointing at the way elite newsrooms can produce catastrophe through incentives that look, in the moment, like competence: deference to official sources, the prestige economy of access, fear of being the outlier, and the intoxicating speed of a national-security story that punishes doubt as disloyalty. “Bad journalism” sounds almost mild until you hear the echo: people died, a region destabilized, and public trust corroded.
His repetition - “bad journalism, even very bad journalism” - is editorial understatement with teeth. It mimics the cautious cadence of newsroom correction while smuggling in a moral verdict: negligence on this scale becomes a kind of ethical failure even if it wasn’t plotted as one. Context matters here. Okrent, as a public editor figure, speaks from inside the institution, which gives the sentence its sting. He’s not selling a rebellion against the press; he’s diagnosing how respectable routines can launder weak evidence into national consensus. The subtext: the danger isn’t evil reporters. It’s normal ones, doing what they’re rewarded for.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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