I have no sympathy for the “Mainstream Media”
I almost never watch television news anymore, but I did have a chance to catch CNN for a few minutes on Sunday morning, where the big headline on the bottom of the screen that remained there for the length of the story read something like “Did the Bush Administration lie to the press?”
Duh . . .
Back in 2002 and 2003 I was hearing the mainstream media regurgitating White House press releases and “official White House sources” whole — little to no questioning, no investigative reporting. While congress and the mainstream media gave Bush a pass on every lie, I was hearing about the lack of WMDs and other Bush lies debunked on the alternative media and in some cases the international media and all that I heard from the alternative media turned out to be true: there were no WMDs, there were/are hundreds of thousands of casualties, the Bush Admin went all out to spread disinformation, and so much more.
Millions of us in this country and around the world were trying to counter the official lies through rallies and peace vigils and in every way we could. Here in Salt Lake we even had a media protest march that ended up at the Salt Lake Tribune building — but still the stories that came out favored the Bush Administration’s version of — well — everything.
Now it seems that the mainstream media is claiming victimhood for being lied to. I’m glad that they are starting to get up the nerve to ask harder questions, but I don’t have any sympathy for the MM right now.
I’m not a trained journalist, but a couple of common sense things that the MM can do to avoid being duped in the future:
1) Check up independently on what official government sources are saying rather than taking them at face value. Never believe what anyone in the government says is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
2) Include opposing views — during the lead up to the Iraq war we heard disproportionately from pro-war hawks and military sources than from peace activists or official sources with contradictory evidence to that being spewed from the Bush Admin spin machine (source).
3) Never forget that you are the fourth branch — you are meant to be a check and balance to the three branches of government in this country. There’s a reason why “Freedom of the Press” is included in our constitution. Take that job seriously.
4) For a good example in how to do journalism right, check out Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow!
5) Lobby the FCC to tighten regulations on media ownership. It amy seem to be against your interests, but it’s hard to do your job right when you have a conflict of interest with your parent company (say NBC for example, which is owned by General Electric, a major defense contractor who has more to gain from war than from peace).
November 14th, 2006 at 10:03 am
If you take things literally, Bush did lie to the press on November 1 when he said that Cheney and Rumsfeld would be staying on to the end and “both men are doing fantastic jobs.” Now he tells us that Rumsfeld’s replacement was already in the works before the election. No word on Cheney’s fate yet.
In Washington-speak, when the president says “I’m behind Smith one thousand percent” it’s time for Smith to seek new career opportunities or spend more time with his family. Too bad for Bush that the voters thought he meant what he said.
November 14th, 2006 at 11:12 am
Richard, it’s too bad for the voters that they believed Bush’s re-endorsement of both Don and Dick. Personally, I’d like to see them both in jail, but at present there’s the ruse going down in the shape of the committee to reformulate responsibility for the Iraq debacle, led by James ‘the fixer’ Baker, made bipartisan by Lee ‘there’s nothing untoward about the 9-11 comish findings’ Hamilton, and propped up by Mr. Gates (not so famous Bush I crony with Iran-contra and many other seemy credentials). Bush lied again, but is that surprizing? No. He’s still gonna try to ‘win’ this crime scene, or at the very least pawn it off on to the newly arrived reformers. (Fact is they haven’t even arrived, yet) the writing is on the walls, more dead U.S. soldiers, more dead Iraqis, more dead Afghanis, more money down the tube and less attention paid to much of the problems that are really going to impact this life.
November 14th, 2006 at 11:22 am
Pardon me, Wiley Coyote is really me. I apologize for the typo. Now for Wiley’s post. Any incoherence is due to my wife’s interupting me in mid-thought. A professional editor will be assigned to clean it up as soon as the new congress is sworn in. This could take a while folks, so be patient. It may be as long as February of 2007, barring an apocolypse. Thanks again. C.E.