Mike, if you're still reading the paper, the United States hasn't found the weapons of mass destruction that were the reason the country went to war in Iraq.
I would have called and told you the news personally, but you were so angry at The Bee, you hung up before giving me your last name and phone number. The last thing you said was that you were canceling your subscription.
Mike was one of several readers who a couple of weeks back were outraged at the paper for failing to report as breaking news a stunning claim by two Republican lawmakers in Washington.
The United States, the lawmakers said, had found 500 chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003, according to a just- released declassified military intelligence report they had obtained.
Mike and the other readers had heard about the discovery the night before on Fox News. Fox News commentators such as Sean Hannity, whom I happened to be watching that evening, were running strong with the story the night of June 21.
It led the Fox News Web site on June 22 with the headline "Report: Hundreds of WMDs Found in Iraq."
The story was based on the press conference by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., and Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., at which Santorum said, "We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons."
"There was nothing about the story in the next day's Bee. I was trying to find out why when the phones started ringing and the e-mails began arriving.
"Since March of 2003, there has been a drumbeat of Bush lied about WMDs," wrote L. Ted Brush Jr. of El Dorado Hills. "The entire campaign against W's re-election in 2004 was that he lied. Now The Bee refuses to admit they were wrong and, in fact, refuses to even acknowledge that Bush is correct.
"A news organization withholding the facts that they don't like is worse than lying. Shame on you. People: Beware, The Bee dispenses propaganda; it does not always report the news."
Linda Kelly wrote to the paper: "There is a reason readership continues to decline with the print media.
"Yesterday there was news of WMDs being found in Iraq. There was nothing in my Bee this morning about that. There was lots of news about the Iraqi war, as usual. News about deaths, killings, etc. Nothing about perhaps the 'lies' that Bush told us being absolved. My, my."
As it turns out, the claims of found WMDs were greatly overstated, as I'll describe in a moment.
The bigger and more lasting point -- the one that remains relevant -- is how many readers immediately pounced on the paper, convinced of its bias without the benefit of an explanation or hint of skepticism about the story.
A few public editors and ombudsmen at other papers wrote about similar critical reader reaction in their communities, illustrating how the story played out nationally.
It also shows the impact of popular Fox News commentators to influence viewers' opinions by decreeing what is news. In a world where political polarization seems to increasingly color the outlook of news consumers and their expectations, that's a powerful role.
What is disheartening in this case is that some readers believed the paper would refuse to run a story about the discovery of real weapons of mass destruction in Iraq for political reasons, the truth be damned.
Trust me on this, if WMDs are found, it will be big news and it won't take the harangues of a TV talk show host to make it so.
As for the weapons touted by the two lawmakers, intelligence officials said they were made before the 1991 Gulf War and were likely intended for use in Iraq's war against Iran in the 1980s.
They were found in small numbers in various places and contained degraded mustard or sarin nerve agents. They were not in condition to be used as designed, and there was no evidence Iraq manufactured chemical munitions after 1991.
How do I know? Fox News told me.
"Offering the official administration response to Fox News, a senior Defense Department official pointed out that the chemical weapons were not in usable conditions," the Fox News Web site story said the next day. The official told Fox News the munitions "are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war."
In a story by the Associated Press a day after the lawmakers' press conference, David Kay, who was in charge of the U.S. weapons hunt in Iraq from 2003 to early 2004, said the current condition of the sarin nerve agent produced in the 1980s "is less toxic than most things that Americans have under their kitchen sink at this point."
The 1980s-produced mustard, Kay said, would unlikely be lethal, though it would produce burns.
But I will say this: The story was a day late.
None of the wire services the paper takes filed a daily story about the WMD claims made by Santorum and Hoekstra at their press conference.
There was only a passing mention made of them in two wire stories -- by AP and Cox newspapers -- about the Senate's debate that day over the Iraqi war. Those stories didn't run in The Bee.
It wasn't until the next day, June 22, that the wires wrote separate stories debunking the WMD discovery, no doubt spurred by the questions raised the day before by Fox News. Those stories did appear in the paper.
That was a day too late not only for those readers convinced of the paper's ulterior and sinister motives, but also for people like me simply looking for straightforward answers and clarity.
