New York Times on White Phosphorus

An Italian television documentary earlier this month charged that the U.S. used white phosphorus munitions in its attack on Faluja in 2004. White phosphorous is a chemical that clings to a person's skin and burns him/her horribly, much like napalm. O.k., a responsible U.S. news organization would, I would think, want to follow up on this report and answer the question: did the U.S. military actually use white phosphorus in its attack on Faluja? The New York Times did not do this. The Times first reported on the documentary on November 13 (Week in Review, page 5) in a story that focused not on the substantive claims, but on the phenomenon of "open source intelligence" reporting on the internet. The Times next reported uncritically the Pentagon's denial of the story on November 17 (p. 16, 196 words). Today, November 21, the Times reports on the story for the third time; not on the question of whether the U.S. military used white phosphorus on civilians in Faluja, but on the confusing public relations efforts of the Pentagon since the documentary. The Times' storyline, in a nutshell:



"The half-hour film was riddled with errors and exaggerations, according to United States officials and independent military experts. But the State Department and Pentagon have so bungled their response -- making and then withdrawing incorrect statements about what American troops really did when they fought a pitched battle against insurgents in the rebellious city -- that the charges have produced dozens of stories in the foreign news media and on Web sites suggesting that the Americans used banned weapons and tried to cover it up."



Er, are there any reporters at the Times who could actually look into these allegations? I think it's important to know.