Evaluating reporting and commentary about Iran could be reduced to one simple rule: There is no evidence that Iran is working on a nuclear weapon. Statements that suggest otherwise are misleading. Reports that fail to point this out are doing readers/viewers/listeners a disservice.

That sounds simple enough. But don't tell that to the outlets that are being criticized over their Iran reporting.

Take NPR and PBS, both of which were singled out by the group Just Foreign Policy.

A few days ago (1/10/12), the FAIR Blog featured a post criticizing the PBS NewsHour for a deceptive report on Iran. The report introduced a quote from Pentagon chief Leon Panetta with this statement by PBS anchor Margaret Warner: "The Iranian government insists that its nuclear activities are for peaceful energy purposes only, an assertion disputed by the U.S. and its allies."

Panetta's quote immediately followed: "We know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability, and that's what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is, do not develop a nuclear weapon." My point in that blog post was that right before he said this, Panetta had made a very candid admission about Iran, one that would no doubt be surprising to most corporate news consumers: "Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No."

The fact that the NewsHour would clip this statement from his soundbite was troubling. PBS ombud Michael Getler responded (1/12/12) by agreeing that we had a point:

I think FAIR makes a good journalistic catch in calling attention to the fuller quote by Panetta on CBS. It was a very brief and clear statement by the Defense secretary on an important point about whether Iran is actually developing a nuclear weapon.

And NewsHour foreign affairs and defense editor Mike Mosettig editor agrees that "it would have been better had we not lopped off the first part of the Panetta quote."

But Getler thinks it was unfair to to call the PBS edit "dishonest," and he explains why:

The logical understanding that NewsHour viewers--and anyone who has been following this subject--would draw from the portion of the Panetta quote that was used is that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon but that they are developing a "nuclear capability" and that the U.S. warning, as Panetta expressed it, is not to cross "our red line" and actually develop a weapon.

So viewers who are paying close attention to Iran coverage (and who are hopefully tuning out the rhetoric coming from many of the Republican presidential candidates) would know that when Panetta was saying, "We know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability," he meant that they were not trying to develop a nuclear weapon--even though the program had edited out his very straightforward explanation of what is actually known about the state of Iran's nuclear program.

This is a curious argument. One of the things that made Panetta's comment so revealing was that it represented a break from the usual chatter about Iran--even within the Obama administration. That's precisely what made it newsworthy. PBS seems to think its viewers should have to read between the lines in order to arrive at the accurate assessment about Iran's nuclear program they left on the cutting room floor.

Now to NPR.

The criticism of Robert Naiman and Just Foreign Policy centered on NPR reporter Tom Gjelten's statement that "the goal for the U.S. and its allies...[is] to convince Iran to give up a nuclear weapons program." The suggestion, it would seem, is that Iran is indeed pursuing such weapons.

But NPR ombud Edward Schumacher-Matos (1/13/12) sees it exactly the other way around. He writes:

The story didn't say or imply that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. As Bruce Auster, the senior editor for national security, notes, "The story was about how the sanctions are designed to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapons program, which automatically suggests it may not have one."

Does NPR really think that the best way to inform its listeners is to assume that when people hear a report about forcing Iran to "give up a nuclear weapons program," these listeners should fill in the blanks themselves so as to arrive at an entirely different meaning? That every time you hear something about Iran's "nuclear weapons program," that is really code for "the-nuclear-weapons-program-that-may not exist-since-there-is-no-evidence-that-it-exists"? That'd be an unusual burden to place on listeners.

For good measure, the ombud throws in another defense of the NPR report by pointing out that the "quote carefully refers to 'a' program--using the indefinite article--and not the definite 'its' or 'the' program." Again, NPR listeners: If you hear one of the reporters use the word "a," remember that could be a reference to something that doesn't exist. Got it?

Last month the group Just Foreign Policy alerted readers to a Washington Post feature that was headlined "Iran's Quest to Possess Nuclear Weapons."

The Post changed the headline, and ombud Patrick Pexton weighed in with a column (12/7/11) saying that

the IAEA report does not say Iran has a bomb, nor does it say it is building one, only that its multiyear effort pursuing nuclear technology is sophisticated and broad enough that it could be consistent with building a bomb.

Pexton added that Just Foreign Policy's Robert Naiman  "and his Web army were right. The headline and subhead were misleading."

At the Post's editorial page, these facts apparently don't matter. Their editorial today (1/11/12) about Iran sanctions closes with this:

Iran may be feeling some economic pain, and it may be isolated. But its drive for nuclear weapons continues.

How many "Web armies" will it take for the editorial page to get the facts right?

The Monday broadcast of CBS Evening News (12/19/11) began with big news, with anchor Scott Pelley announcing:

The secretary of Defense says tonight that the United States will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. In an interview with CBS News, Leon Panetta says that despite efforts to disrupt their nuclear program, the Iranians have reached a point where they can assemble a bomb in a year or potentially less.

To ratchet up the drama, Pelley told viewers that Panetta was aboard  "the jet nicknamed the Doomsday Plane. This is the command post where he and the president would direct a nuclear war."

Pelley reiterated that, according to Panetta, "Iran needs only one year to build a nuclear weapon." Then came this exchange:

PELLEY: So are you saying that Iran could have a nuclear weapon in 2012?

PANETTA: It would be sometime around a year that they would be able to do it. Perhaps a little less. The one proviso, Scott, is if they have a hidden facility somewhere in Iran that may be enriching fuel.

PELLEY: So that they could develop a weapon even more quickly than we believed?

PANETTA: That's correct.

Near the end of the segment, Pelley made this remark:

Panetta told us that while the Iranians need a year or less to assemble the weapon, he has no indication yet that they have made the decision to go ahead.

So Iran could have a weapon in a year--or maybe not at all.

In today's New York Times, we see a story headlined, "Aides Qualify Panetta’s Comments on Iran," which leads with this:

An assertion by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta that Iran could have a nuclear weapon as soon as next year was based on a highly aggressive timeline and a series of actions that Iran has not yet taken, senior Pentagon officials said Tuesday.

The report added these comments from a Pentagon spokesperson (bolded for emphasis):

"The secretary was clear that we have no indication that the Iranians have made a decision to develop a nuclear weapon," Mr. Little said. "He was asked to comment on prospective and aggressive timelines on Iran’s possible production of nuclear weapons--and he said if, and only if, they made such a decision. He didn't say that Iran would, in fact, have a nuclear weapon in 2012."

Now without knowing what was actually said in the full interview, it's hard to know whether Panetta's office is trying to walk back his careless, inaccurate rhetoric, or whether the CBS interviewer was pushing a hard line on Iran and nuclear weapons, treating the allegations being made about that country's nuclear program as if they were facts.

If it's the latter, it wouldn't be unprecedented. At the December 15 Republican debate, Fox host Bret Baier posed this question to Ron Paul:

Congressman Paul, many Middle East experts now say Iran may be less than one year away from getting a nuclear weapon. Now, judging from your past statements, even if you had solid intelligence that Iran, in fact, was going to get a nuclear weapon, President Paul would remove the U.S. sanctions on Iran, included those added by the Obama administration. So, to be clear, GOP nominee Paul would be running left of President Obama on the issue of Iran?

Paul tried to explain to Baier that there is not, in fact, any intelligence suggesting Iran is less than a year from having the bomb. As Paul explained:

For you to say that there is some scientific evidence and some people arguing that maybe in a year they might have a weapon, there's a lot more saying they don't have it. There's no UN evidence of that happening. Clapper at the--in our national security department, he says there is no evidence. It's no different than it was in 2003. You know what I really fear about what's happening here? It's another Iraq coming. There's war propaganda going on.

Baier, for his part, followed up by demanding that the candidate answer a question based on a false premise:

Congressman Paul, the question was based on the premise that you had solid intelligence, you actually had solid intelligence as President Paul, and yet you still at that point would pull back U.S. sanctions, and again, as a GOP nominee, would be running left of President Obama on this issue?

It's probably not that these journalists want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. But they do seem to want to have a public debate that assumes Iran is about to have a nuclear weapon. Given the possible repercussions, that's bad enough.

When the International Atomic Energy Agency is about to release a report on an official enemy like Iran, you can be fairly confident that contents of the report--or what people believe should be in it--will be leaked to elite newspapers by anonymous sources in or near the IAEA, who will tend to make more alarming charges than the agency will eventually make in public.

That started happening this weekend. At the Washington Post, Joby Warrick had a piece on Monday headlined, "Iran Close to Nuclear Capability, IAEA Says." The most telling indication of what was going on was right in the lead:

Intelligence provided to UN nuclear officials shows that Iran's government has mastered the critical steps needed to build a nuclear weapon, receiving assistance from foreign scientists to overcome key technical hurdles, according to Western diplomats and nuclear experts briefed on the findings.

Read that closely and you can see that the key allegation is not that the IAEA will necessarily report any such thing, but that "intelligence" has been directed their way that makes such allegations. The United States and other countries have been lobbying the IAEA for years to take a harder line on Iran's nuclear program--a fact that renders the New York Times' headline, "U.S. Hangs Back as Inspectors Prepare Report on Iran’s Nuclear Program," rather odd. The Times, a bit like the Post, reports--via the usual leaks--that the IAEA will come down fairly hard:

An imminent report by United Nations weapons inspectors includes the strongest evidence yet that Iran has worked in recent years on a kind of sophisticated explosives technology that is primarily used to trigger a nuclear weapon, according to Western officials who have been briefed on the intelligence.

That's what the big papers are saying--but there are some good, critical pieces worth reading in order to get a good handle on this story.  Bob Dreyfuss at the Nation writes that the Iraq lesson should be foremost in people's minds:

In this case, the Post reports, the IAEA has "acquired satellite photos of a bus-size steel container" used to field test "the kinds of high-precision conventional explosives used to trigger a nuclear chain-reaction." The IAEA may be right, but those photographs ought to raise hackles among experts who were burned once, and badly, over Iraq's nonexistent WMD program.

Dreyfuss adds that much of the case seems built around a "former Soviet nuclear scientist" allegedly advising Iran--but that the advice seems to have been happening in the mid-1990s. And this Moon of Alabama blog makes the case that the scientist in question is an expert on nanodiamonds and detonation--which would require the kinds of facilities that are allegedly being flagged as nuclear weapons-related.

And on a more journalistic level, see how Antiwar.com writes about anonymous sources:

According to Western diplomats who refused to reveal their identity, the evidence will include satellite images of what of is supposedly a large steel container used for high-explosives tests related to nuclear arms as well as intelligence that Iran made computer models of a nuclear warhead.

FAIR raised the point two years ago that Iran nuclear claims can look a lot like Iraq WMD claims-- and the media should exercise the skepticism that was missing in 2002 and 2003. It's hard to say they've learned the lesson.

When "journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling stepped back onto American soil after being detained in North Korea for over four months. Their safe return was covered widely in the American media, and rightfully so," writes Women In Media & News guest blogger Tristin Aaron (8/12/09), "yet their reason for traveling to North Korea has been all but forgotten in the media reports on Lee and Ling":

Euna Lee and Laura Ling were reporting on the trafficking of women from North Korea into China. As Ji-Yeon Yuh notes in, "What Were Laura Ling and Euna Lee Looking For in North Korea?": "Of North Korean women and girl refugees in China, an estimated 80 to 90 percent are victims of trafficking. This is likely the highest percentage of trafficking in a single population."...

Further, these victims of human trafficking are treated as criminals by North Korea, and as illegal immigrants in China. Writing for the Women’s Media Center, Ji-Yeon Yuh highlights a gap in the media's coverage not only of the story Euna Lee and Laura Ling were reporting, but of coverage of North Korea in general: "The wider world takes little notice of these victims, with mainstream media closely focused on the issue of North Korea’s nuclear weapons."

Read all of Ji-Yeon Yuh's story on the website for Aaron's Women’s Media Center. And listen to the FAIR radio show CounterSpin: "John Feffer on North Korea" (5/29/09).

Hiroshima in America author Greg Mitchell (Editor & Publisher, 8/6/09) has taken a hard look at "the suppression of film and photographic evidence of the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki" that "would play a key role as America embarked on a nuclear era with severe impact still with us today."

He gives us a history of how, "in the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan 64 years ago and then for decades afterward, the United States engaged in airtight suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings":

This included footage shot by U.S. military crews and Japanese newsreel teams. In addition, for many years, all but a handful of newspaper photographs were seized or prohibited.

The public did not see any of the newsreel footage for 25 years, and the U.S. military film remained hidden for nearly four decades....

More recently, [compiler of the U.S. films Lt. Col. (Ret.) Daniel] McGovern declared that Americans should have seen the damage wrought by the bomb. "The main reason it was classified was...because of the horror, the devastation," he said. Because the footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was hidden for so long, the atomic bombings quickly sank, unconfronted and unresolved, into the deeper recesses of American awareness, as a costly nuclear arms race, and nuclear proliferation, accelerated.

Bringing us up to date with the fact that "after 60 years at least a small portion of that footage reached part of the American public in the unflinching and powerful" Original Child Bomb documentary, Mitchell says that "Americans who saw were finally able to fully judge for themselves" exactly "why the authorities felt they had to suppress it, and what impact their footage, if widely aired, might have had on the nuclear arms race--and the nuclear proliferation that plagues, and endangers, us today."

Listen to FAIR's radio show CounterSpin: "Greg Mitchell on Hiroshima" (8/5/05). And see Extra! Update: "Media to Smithsonian: History Is Bunk" (4/95)

FAIR associate Sam Husseini has blogged his reaction (Husseini.org, 7/4/09) to a Barack "Obama Photo Op with Helen Thomas" in which the president "came with cupcakes to wish Helen Thomas a happy birthday": "Now, if only he'd take her questions."

Obama claimed they have a "common birthday wish"--for a "real healthcare reform bill"--but Thomas is not in favor of Obama's plan, she's for single-payer.

Last week I bumped into Helen Thomas at her stomping ground, Mama Ayesha's restaurant in Washington, D.C., and she stressed the single-payer failure on the part of Obama.

I asked her if I was right, that Obama hadn't called on her since his first news conference. Yes, she confirmed. He's had five news conferences since and not a single question from her.

And why would that be? Well, "at his first news conference, she asked about Obama's buildup in Afghanistan and Pakistan and about Israel's nuclear weapons arsenal," but "Obama declined to 'speculate' about the existence of such an arsenal."

Husseini asserts that reporters "should be asking Obama: Why are you refusing to take Thomas' questions? Why are you refusing to acknowledge the existence of Israel's nuclear weapons arsenal?"

But then, Husseini makes a habit of asking exactly such questions so doggedly ignored by his corporate counterparts.

Noticing that "many of the headlines greeting North Korea's nuclear blast yesterday carried the phrase 'as big as the Hiroshima bomb' or words to that effect," media writer and Hiroshima in America co-author Greg Mitchell (Editor & Publisher, 5/26/09) says "that's not the only reference point that Hiroshima should evoke":

Simply stated: The fact that the U.S. first developed, and then used--twice--the WMD to end all WMDs against heavily populated cities, killing a quarter of a million civilians (and very few soldiers), has severely compromised our arguments against others building the weapon ever since.

Americans may not like to hear that but it happens to be true....

I'm not saying that there is nothing scary about North Korea or Iran (or anyone else) getting the bomb. I'm just pointing out that it is almost impossible for us to work our will on this abroad given our long track record. Yet how we are viewed usually is not reflected at all in comments by American pundits and politicos.

To Mitchell, "that's the true meaning of the 'Hiroshima' you see in the headlines." Listen to the FAIR radio program CounterSpin: "Greg Mitchell on Hiroshima" (8/5/05)