Newsweeklies, Not So Newsy

US. News & World Report, the major newsweekly with the lowest circulation, is also the one that gives conservatives the fewest fits. It is, however, capable of raising our eyebrows. The June 28/July 5 issue carries a long series of articles on “Defining America.” One of the things that define America is “dissent,” and Thomas Hayden has written an article on it. It contains nothing terribly provocative, or interesting, until the end, when Hayden suggests that America post-9/11 has silenced dissent. “[A]s shown by the current spate of media self-examination over an obvious lack of questioning of the government before the Iraq war, sometimes nondissent can be just as harmful to the state.”

Let’s leave aside the equation of questioning and dissent, which in Hayden’s formulation seems to give the media some quasi-governmental role and a duty to “dissent” from whatever administration is in power. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the media should have questioned widespread assumptions about Iraq’s WMD program. But it is simply untrue that the media failed to dissent from the Bush administration, or to cover its opponents, about the war itself. Hayden need not examine how Howell Raines or Peter Jennings handled the pre-war debate to see this. He could just look at the newsweeklies.

About the Author

Ramesh Ponnuru

Ramesh Ponnuru is the editor of National Review, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

US. News & World Report, the major newsweekly with the lowest circulation, is also the one that gives conservatives the fewest fits. It is, however, capable of raising our eyebrows. The June 28/July 5 issue carries a long series of articles on “Defining America.” One of the things that define America is “dissent,” and Thomas Hayden has written an article on it. It contains nothing terribly provocative, or interesting, until the end, when Hayden suggests that America post-9/11 has silenced dissent. “[A]s shown by the current spate of media self-examination over an obvious lack of questioning of the government before the Iraq war, sometimes nondissent can be just as harmful to the state.”

Let’s leave aside the equation of questioning and dissent, which in Hayden’s formulation seems to give the media some quasi-governmental role and a duty to “dissent” from whatever administration is in power. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the media should have questioned widespread assumptions about Iraq’s WMD program. But it is simply untrue that the media failed to dissent from the Bush administration, or to cover its opponents, about the war itself. Hayden need not examine how Howell Raines or Peter Jennings handled the pre-war debate to see this. He could just look at the newsweeklies.