Letters to the Editor
Paul Rosenberg
Published Letters: 994 Editor's Choice: 16
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I've Got A Journalism Award, Too
[Read the article: National journalists believe you should trust them]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well, sort of. I had one of five stories cited by Project Censored for their #1 story of 2002-2003 (Awarded in 2004)--The Neoconservative Plan for Global Dominance:
http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2004/1.html
although it was not cited in their original list of 3 stories, which went into their hardcopy book at the time.
My story came out on October 2, 2002. I had no special high-level sources, although I drew on the works of others who did. But I simply paid attention and put together information that the mainstream media choose to ignore. They are still ignoring it to this day.
This is about the power of narratives. For all the disasters it has brought about, the mainstream media is still peddling the neocon narrative, albeit in what could be called its "weak" form. Some essential features of this framing are that Democrats have "prove" themselves by showing how "tough" they can be, that terrorism must seen as military problem, that we must "win the war on terror," rather than eliminate sources of support for terrorism, that the American people's judgement and values must be constantly misrepresented or ignored, and that America's disasterous decline in global influence cannot be mentioned in polite company.
In contrast, those of us who shared that #1 story award were writing critically about the neocon narrative, rather than from within it. The neocons are the problem, not the solution. They have done far, far more to spread terror (both within America and around the world) than bin Laden ever dreamed of.
The Downing Street Memo is a non-story in the mainstream media's narrative. It is the smoking gun in the counter-narrative,.
In the mainstream media narrative, Iraq was attacked because of 9/11. So, mistakes were made when it came to connecting the dots. Blame it on the intelligence agencies.
In the counter-narrative, 9/11 was just an excuse for carrying out a pre-determined plan of regional conquest, which was supposed to be a piece of cake, and part of a much larger global expansion of US force, whose ultimate goal was to establish American hegemony for the rest of the century, subduing China as our principle rival, while preventing any other regional power from even getting as far as China had by 2000. (This is straight out of the Project for A New American Century's September 2000 report, "Rebuilding America's Defenses." No unnamed sources necessary for this scoop!)
By now, the majority of the American people have come around to a gut-level belief in the counter-narrative. They don't have the details. Most don't even have the overall architecture. They just know that they were lied to, that bin Laden is still at large, and that the mainstrema media not only went along with it, but actually helped make it happen.
So when folks instinctively don't believe ABC News, and don't give a hoot about Peabodies, they are totally justified, and ABC News is clueless as usual--despite the fact, of course, that a lot of fine individual journalists still work there.
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Glenn, Hankfest & Trusting The Media
[Read the article: National journalists believe you should trust them]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There's an issue here of distinguishing between broad and specific attitudes.
Hankfest is making a good, though ultimately irrelevant point for the matter at hand--there is so much media distrust in America that it's hard to use broad measure of media trust to prove Glenn's point.
OTOH, for all people's complaints about distrusting the media in the abstract, they remain incredibly trusting on the day-to-day level. The media continues to be able to peddle its moral panic of the week, year in and year out. Shark attacks, flesh-eating bacteria, whatever.
And thus, this suggests the appropriate way to guage Glenn's claim: compare the media's narrative on Iraq with the American people's attitudes. When we do this, we find (a) the media continuing to cheerlead for Bush, continuously warning the Democrats not to take unpopular positions, while (b) the American people are solidly opposed to Bush's course, recognize it as a failed policy, and want a change of direction from the Democrats.
Clearly, if the American people did trust the media on Bush's great war on terror, they would be storming the gates, demanding that Pelosi and Reid back off. But nothing like this is happening, because the American people do not trust the media on Iraq.
Which, of course, is why they have no reason to trust them on Iran, either.