Media Tall Tales for the Next War (Norman Solomon)

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

by Norman Solomon

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0925-31.htm

<snip>

When the USA's biggest newsweekly devotes five pages to scoping out a U.S. air war against Iran, as Time did in the same issue, it's yet another sign that the wheels of our nation's war-spin machine are turning faster toward yet another unprovoked attack on another country.

Ahmadinejad has risen to the top of Washington's -- and American media's -- enemies list. Within the last 20 years, that list has included Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic, with each subjected to extensive vilification before the Pentagon launched a large-scale military attack.

Whenever the president of the United States decides to initiate or intensify a media blitz against a foreign leader, mainstream U.S. news outlets have dependably stepped up the decibels and hysteria. But the administration can also call off the dogs of war by going silent about the evils of some foreign tyrant.

Take Libya's dictator, for instance. For more than a third of a century, Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi has been a despot whose overall record of repression makes Noriega or Milosevic seem relatively tolerant of domestic political foes. But ever since Qaddafi made a deal with the Bush administration in December 2003, the silence out of Washington about Qaddafi's evilness has been notable...

[Jack Rabbit]

1. K&R

Today, while the human rights situation in Iran is reprehensible, the ongoing circumstances are far worse under many governments favored by Washington. Here at home, media outlets should be untangling double standards instead of contributing to them. But so many reporters and pundits have internalized Washington's geopolitical agendas that the mainline institutions of journalism continue to rot from within. That the rot goes largely unnoticed is testimony to how Orwellian "doublethink" has been normalized . . . .

The same kind of media spin -- assuming a sincere Bush desire to avoid war -- was profuse in the months before the invasion of Iraq. The more that news outlets tell such fairy tales, the more they become part of the war machinery.

What kind of idiot would assume a "sincere" Bush wants to avoid war?

[yurbud]

2. kick--you could just use the three monkeys

whoever the current network anchors are besides spokesmodel Katie Couric.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

3. Yes, that would be a good graphic.

[yurbud]

4. I'll have to do it later today. Aren't all three network anchors now

totally vacuous spokesmodels who don't even pretend to be reporters?

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

5. Yes, they are corporate media whores.