If only there were still editors. Never mind fact checkers, our “top reporters” can’t even parse across 6 paragraphs. In today’s story about how the Qataris shipped weapons to anti-Qadaffi fighters in Libya, the 5th paragraph tells us that the Obama Administration knew about it, didn’t object to it, but didn’t encourage it either:
The Obama administration did not initially raise objections when Qatar began shipping arms to opposition groups in Syria, even if it did not offer encouragement, according to current and former administration officials.
In the 11th paragraph–same story, same reporters, we find that the administration did indeed encourage it:
But after the White House decided to encourage Qatar — and on a smaller scale, the United Arab Emirates — to ship arms to the Libyans, President Obama complained in April 2011 to the emir of Qatar that his country was not coordinating its actions in Libya with the United States, the American officials said. “The president made the point to the emir that we needed transparency about what Qatar was doing in Libya,” said a former senior administration official who had been briefed on the matter.
Meanwhile, the headline says that the administration “approved” it.
This by you is reporting? Three names are on the story: Risen, Mazzetti, and Schmidt. Maybe one of them could have asked, “so did you or didn’t you?”
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