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February 15, 2008

“Newspapers were sceptical of government WMD claims”: more Flat Earth News debate

By Patrick

Adrian Monck, former editor of Five News and now head of journalism of City University, has questioned Flat Earth News author Nick Davies’s claim that newspapers did not question the government’s “dodgy dossier” on weapons of mass destruction.

The dossier, famously revealed by Andrew Gilligan on the Radio 4 Today programme, said that Saddam Hussein could launch a missile attack on Britain within 45 minutes.

Monck, who took part in a debate with Davies last night at the Royal Society of the Arts, says that almost every newspaper question the document’s veracity.

He says that the Daily Mail, FT, Daily Telegraph, and the Daily Star among others ran sceptical editorial or op-ed pieces on the document.

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