On Monday, the New York Times "broke" the story of the purported looting of weapons from an Iraqi arms depot. "Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished from Site in Iraq" screamed the front-page Times headline, which was picked up by all the major networks and newspapers, not to mention the Kerry campaign. CBS's "60 Minutes" was also set to air a story on Sunday -- two days before the election -- aimed at convincing viewers that the administration had carelessly let the al Qaqaa depot be looted of its powerful explosives, the kind that might even be used to detonate a nuclear device. "Our plan was to run the story on Oct. 31, but it became clear that it wouldn't hold," CBS executive producer Jeff Fager said in a statement.
In fact, the "missing explosives" story was more media campaign ploy than real news. There is substantial evidence that most of the explosives were either destroyed by U.S. bombing prior to the invasion or were already gone by the time U.S. troops arrived at al Qaqaa on April 10, 2003, according to NBC, which had a reporter embedded with the Army's 101st Airborne Division at the time. Furthermore, the U.S. has already destroyed or is in the process of destroying more than 400,000 tons of similar material in Iraq, a fact conveniently ignored by much of the media.
The media rule seems to be if a story might hurt George W. Bush, play it up big; if it might help Bush, bury it; and if might hurt John Kerry, ignore it altogether. In an election as close as this one, the media's role could be decisive. We used to expect the candidates to unleash their own October surprise in an effort to sway the voters at the last minute. Now it's the media that plays that game. Come Halloween, it's media tricks for Bush and treats for Kerry.