Letters to the Editor
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Would it make a difference at this point?
Leaving aside all the technical issues concerning the original anthrax strains used, I have to ask:
Would it really make any real, positive difference for ABC News to issue a mea culpa retraction of its Saddam-anthrax stories at this point in time?
The media's creditability is pretty much gone now on this and most other issues. ABC News admitting it was flogging a discredited story all this time is unlikely to help it any in that regard and indeed may make further alienate the public from them.
Over 150,000 US troops are still in Iraq and the White House shows no sign of changing its current non-strategy in that regard. The whole "Saddam had WMD" meme has been accepted as an outright lie that, again, ABC News admitting one of the hydra-heads of that particular angle was outright false isn't likely to do more than confirm the already accepted fact the Bush Administration lied its way into this disaster.
Am I suggesting there should be no retraction? Emphatically, NO! ABC News, like CBS and MSNBC and CNN and all the rest, should come as clean as possible and admit they were sounding a drumbeat for war where one wasn't justified. But they (and we ourselves) should know that in itself won't be enough to undo the damage done.
It in fact would only be a start, and a small one at that.
Would a retraction by ABC News on this make any practical difference to current opinions or circumstances? I don't believe so.
Should they do it anyway? Absolutely, if only to demonstrate they are indeed serious about rebuilding their creditability as a news agency. Whether they can actually do so remains to be seen.