Letters to the Editor
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Ooops.
Completely forgot to mention ignoring the presses inability to research or investigate the administrations support of and reliance on Achmed Chalabi and the Iraq National Congress. But never mind.
Have to agree with RealName. The antidote to the Right Wing Machine isn't a Left Wing Nightmare. It's time to get back to a free, curious and independant media. Not a media trying to fill heads with their own convoluted swill. There's not much difference between a fascist dictator and a communist dictator, they both want to tell you what to think.
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The MSM has always been a lapdog
Gary Kamiya’s article “Iraq: Why the media failed” is interesting, but it goes back years, maybe a decade when the real problem lies far deeper in our understanding of the media.
The vaunted MSM, with its subservience to power, is hardly new. Has there ever really been a time when the MSM, under whatever name was applied to it at the time, did NOT serve the interests of its masters–be they media owners or those who court and pay journalists for coverage?
Was it Jonathan Swift who, way back in the 18th Century referred to the “ink stained wretches” who, on commission, produced pamphlets supporting whatever political position their patrons required? Someone has coined the phrase “toner-stained wretches” to describe this century’s equivalent.
By and large the media–scribes, writers, printers, filmmakers, videographers–have always produced the propaganda that their patrons request and pay for. Fox News is hardly a new phenomenon in a country with a long history of the “yellow press.”
Remember that Woodward and Bernstein were not covering the White House when they brought down a President. They were city-side reporters covering a local break in when they stumbled upon a Presidential conspiracy. The White House newsroom by and large ignored what Woodward and Bernstein wrote. For some reason management at the Washington Post let them report. One can only wish present-day management at the Post had the same balls as Ben Bradlee.
I.F. Stone, the paradigm of American investigative reporting was hard of hearing and had failing eyesight. As a result, he didn’t attend White House press conferences and a far-left political history meant he was not welcome in Washington salons. So he spent his time pouring over government files and documents…and breaking important political stories which were then picked up by the MSM when it could no longer ignore the buzz.
The problem with today’s media isn’t that it is far too complacent and in cahoots with whatever centre of power exists in Washington. It always has been.
Today’s problem is that the advertisers, the spin-doctors, the pollsters, have the MSM in its hand. They have advanced the methods of controlling and influencing the media over the last 20 years.
Real reporters–those in the media who really are interested in getting at the truth–are still locked in worldview where they see themselves operating as they did 20 or even 30 years ago.
Kamiya is lost in the same ancient time wrap. He thinks the MSM is something that can be reformed, that it can be returned to being a watchdog in the democratic process. It never was, it never will be.
Real reporting….telling the readers the truth….is something that happens around the edges of the MSM; two city-side reporters who are allowed to follow the leads; an old-man with poor eyesight who actually reads and understands government regulations.
The real question Kamiya should ask is how we can encourage and promote that edge activity … that area where the truth gets out.
Bloggers anyone?
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Also.....
.....I think the media -- i.e. reporters and editors -- assumed the following:
1. The American political / electoral system works well, and therefore, by definition, no one that it puts into high office can be a dangerous radical. Hence, by definition, if a president, his aides and Cabinet secretaries are proposing something, it must not be radical or dangerous.
2. There are responsible officials in Congress, and in every administration, who will stop their colleagues from doing anything really irresponsible, or at least will provide reporters with whatever alternative perspective (and quotes) are needed on any given issue.
3. Wars in Iraq are easy, one-week affairs, as we learned in 1991. Predictions of big trouble, massive casualties, quagmires, etc. are alarmist and overblown, and the people who issue such warnings look stupid later on.
4. Related assumption: America's military capabilities are nearly limitless. The U.S. military does not lose wars.
Assumption #1 was obviated by the 2000 "election," and Assumption #2 by the post-9/11 rollover that Kamiya talks about. Assumption #3 was based on a false reading of the first Gulf War, which was relatively easy because its objectives were so limited; and Assumption #4 was proven wrong in Vietnam, but the first Gulf War and other military adventures of the last 30 years showed that whatever went wrong in Vietnam had been corrected.
Needless to say, the combination of these assumptions is seriously toxic.
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the weathervane
this is one of Gary Kamiya's best articles in some time; nevertheless I think Kamiya lets the US press off a little too easily when he suggests they've improved. The weathervane factor he cites is mostly responsible for their recent skeptical turn, and it may well pass. The (mostly brainless) mainstream coverage of the conflict with Iran certainly suggests they've learned nothing from experience.
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clarification
Just to be clear, when I wrote in my earlier post that "the first Gulf War and other military adventures of the last 30 years showed that whatever went wrong in Vietnam had been corrected," I meant that this had been "shown" in the minds of journalists making these assumptions, not that it's objectively true. In fact, I think the first Gulf War and its outcome are key. It made opposing wars in Iraq look both stupid and unpatriotic. But, of course, those who thought this were operating on a false analogy. It's as if you found that even though you're no auto mechanic, changing the oil in your car yourself is pretty easy -- and then concluded from this that it wouldn't be hard for you take the whole engine apart and rebuild it.