David Warren makes some spot-on observations on why the reporting from Libya has been so unreliable:

The issue is not crude bias. It is, so far as I am able to understand, the compounded effect of two large factors. Journalists fail to self-criticize, because we belong to a particular, now globalized, class, that is self-referential, like all classes. We assume that others either think as we do; or are beyond the pale.

And this is compounded by the nature of our trade. We must seem to know what we are talking about. “The news must always sound important,” as the late Indian national broadcaster Latika Ratnam once told me, while explaining why the late Walter Cronkite could sound most credible, when he was least well informed.

Those hoping to retain authority must avoid contradicting themselves. Once you have said something is so, it must continue to be so, despite evidence to the contrary. You must stick with what you have already reported, for as long as you can, to avoid the naked emperor problem.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Gadhafi regime is extinguished by the time this column appears in print. Or, is still clinging to life, in six months’ time. We simply don’t have enough information; and much of the information we have is wrong.

Come to think of it, these problems aren’t limited to reporting on Libya. But it’s in Libya that they seem especially prominent.

If I go back to the very first post I wrote about the Libyan conflict (in February of 2011), the coverage already puzzled me. It’s not that I knew what was happening there—I certainly did not—but I noticed that journalists seemed to not be asking the most obvious questions about it. Here’s what I wondered:

I have read nothing that indicates any sort of knowledge about who the Libyan protesters are. Patriots eager for liberty? Islamists eager for a theocracy? Enemies of Qaddafi eager for their own leaders to take over, establish their own tyrannical dictatorship, and enjoy its spoils? Young men just tired of being poor, and angry in general? All of the above?

I sounded that note over and over again, in posts with titles like “Does anyone really know what’s going on in Libya?,” “Who are the Libyan rebels?” (and then again, same title, here), and “Libya: in the land of the liars, how to know the truth?” It’s not that I’m so smart, nor am I so well-informed. It’s just that it puzzled me that so many articles I read about Libya tried to sound authoritative although the authors obviously didn’t know the answers and, more surprisingly, weren’t even asking the right questions.

Warren thinks it’s a matter of the journalists involved being fools, not knaves. I’m not so sure.

[NOTE: As for Walter Cronkite, please see this and this.]