Normon Solomon: US Media Poodles

[babylonsister]

US Media Poodles
Despite bouts of superficial self-criticism, when it comes to war, the US media excel at following the White House line
by Norman Solomon


At times, long after laying the big flagstones on the path to war, mainstream US media outlets resolve to be more independent next time. And why not? As Mark Twain commented, “It’s easy to quit smoking. I’ve done it hundreds of times.”

When the president and his team set out to prepare the media ground for war, they can rely on a repetition compulsion that’s widespread in the American press. Major outlets seem unable to resist White House agenda-setting for war. Cases in point span decades, from Vietnam and the Dominican Republic to Grenada and Panama, to Iraq and Yugoslavia, to Afghanistan and Iraq again - with Iran likely to join the list next year.

Along the way, beginning with the 1991 Gulf war, the better performances of the British press compared to the American media - high jumps over low standards - have not prevented the British government from requiting the worst aspects of the special relationship by supplying troops and weaponry for US-initiated war efforts based on deception.

The political feasibility of waging these tragic wars can be largely traced to the US media’s reflexive capitulations to the administration in Washington - providing stenographic services far more often than tough scrutiny.

In the US, superficial self-critiques have become periodic rituals at big news organisations. But the basic and chronic failures to engage in independent journalism routinely elude serious examination, whether by the “public editor” at The New York Times or by The Washington Post’s in-house media columnist, Howard Kurtz, who has long double dipped as a punch pulling media critic on the CNN payroll. Such media institutions have no use for analysing deep-seated patterns of war reporting.

The belated and fuzzy outlines of the US media’s second thoughts are apt to appear long after the realtime coverage has aided and abetted Washington’s war planners. So, today, with few murmurs of concern from the powerhouse US media, the quality of reporting on the Iranian “threat” is scarcely more of a departure from the official White House line than what we were getting five years ago in countless stories about the menace of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

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http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/20/5350/