David Remnick, Pulitzer Prize winner and editor of The New Yorker magazine, spoke Wednesday night at a packed Memorial Chapel. His talk included a scathing indictment of the Bush administration, accompanied by a somewhat gentler review of the recent failures of American journalism’s coverage leading up the Iraq War. He then conducted a lively question-and-answer session that touched on topics from creeping authoritarianism in Russia to continuing media coverage of New Orleans.

Remnick began his speech with a generous dose of self-deprecation. He joked that his role in choosing the cartoons that appear in the magazine was a job worthy of a twelve-year-old, and recalled the contempt he had held for editors when he was a young reporter.

Remnick soon turned to more substantial subjects. He lauded the Internet as the greatest boon to human thought and communication since the 15th century.

“No doubt that the Net is the sort of instrument that, unlike military power, has the ability to inform and persuade,” Remnick said.

He next delved into an examination of the interplay between journalism and government in recent years.

“Journalism must confront the fact that governments lie,” he said. “They spin, shade, cover up and sometimes deliberately mislead the public.”

Remnick asserted that the Bush administration resolved to invade Iraq shortly after Sept. 11 2001, and that the administration crafted its case for Saddam Hussein’s WMD program in service of this objective. He said that while Bush and his team steadfastly refused to acknowledge any contrary evidence that was presented to them, the news media did not do enough to provide factual information contradicting the government’s case for war.

“That was the great failure of the press,” he said.

He then returned to eviscerating the recent conduct of the Bush administration and turned to what he said was its role in fabricating stories about weapons of mass destruction, and even its poor treatment of those within the government who offered perspectives in any way contrary to the party line. He illustrated this second point by referencing the dismissal of General Eric Shinseki, who publicly stated that success in Iraq would require hundreds of thousands additional troops than the Bush administration seemed willing to commit.

After reiterating journalism’s failure to satisfactorily reveal government duplicity in the build-up to war, he commended much recent investigative reporting. He spoke about the role of reporters in revealing scandals from government infringements of civil liberties to prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib despite what he said is the current administration’s continuing hostility to the press.

“After most of the stories I just mentioned, the government responded by accusing reporters of a lack of patriotism, of endangering the troops, even treason,” he said.

Remnick stated that the Bush administration has tried to block the publication of critical stories in numerous ways, from threatening to revive the Espionage Act of 1917 to classifying ever-greater numbers of government documents.

He asserted that editors need to support the kind of reporting that challenges government claims.

He was sure to remind the audience that, despite the focus of his speech, The New Yorker’s areas of coverage extended far beyond national security concerns to include fiction, cartoons and arts coverage, before concluding his speech for questions.

An audience member asked Remnick, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1994 book “Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire,” his thoughts on the current state of the Russian government. The editor painted a mostly grim picture of entrenched corruption and authoritarianism, ameliorated to some small extent by the growth of a middle class in metropolitan areas.

In response to an inquiry about what one audience member felt was the press’ inadequate coverage of continued hardship in New Orleans, Remnick expressed regret that there had not been more extensive coverage, but explained that there was a tough-to-admit limit to the amount of suffering the magazine’s readership can tolerate. There are other aspects of the story that need to be told, he said. He mentioned the fact that many of the poorer minority victims of Hurricane Katrina have yet to return, resulting in a sort of “gentrification by natural disaster” that the press needs to explore.

Responding to an audience member who accused journalists of being compliant and ineffectual during the build-up to the Iraq War, Remnick contended that it was a complicated time clouded by misinformation.

“When you say [the press] knew X, Y, and Z, that’s just not the case,” Remnick said.

Remnick said that even many of those who were against the war initially believed that Saddam Hussein was indeed developing a nuclear weapons program.

“I asked myself ‘Why did we miss this?’” Remnick said. “Our frustration was as great as yours.”