The Implosion of US Media

Public Broadcasting ran a documentary recently on the inner workings of Al Jazeerah. It should be required viewing for all Americans. The chaotic office scenes of the "chain smoking news hounds" rooting about for every bit of breaking news would undoubtedly remind many viewers of what was best about the American "free press" in days long gone by. The sad reality, as most of us know, is that the US media has degenerated into an airtight chamber manned by toothy mannikins with lacquered hair and Brooks Brothers suits, whose job it is to provide a corporate-friendly view of the world.

The amount of self censorship and disinformation has gotten so extreme that I find myself cross-checking virtually every important story that comes over the wire from either The New York Times or the Associated Press with sources outside the US. The results are predictably dismal.

The lead up to the War in Iraq gives a good illustration of this problem. Prior to the war 65% of the American public did not support the conflict without UN approval, and nearly 70% wanted to give the weapons inspectors more time. Hardly a ringing endorsement of Bush's planned aggression. Regardless of this conspicuous opposition, the televised media presented the views of people opposed to the war a mere 3% of the time. Dissenting voices were simply drowned out by the myriad military analysts and pro war pundits that the stations hired to promote the war. (Data provided by Fairness and Accuracy in Media.)

Similarly, and even more outrageously, The New York Times and The Associated Press propagated nearly every false story (i.e., the aluminum tubes fiasco, Saddam's palaces being used for chem-bio weapons, trucks being used as mobile labs, false allegations from Iraqi defectors, etc.) that contributed to convincing the people that Saddam posed a imminent threat to US national security--a claim that we know now was so wildly exaggerated that it is laughable, if not criminal.

During the war the same commitment to misinformation, public relation gambits, and filtered news persisted (e.g., the Jessica Lynch story, photo ops of toppling statues of Saddam, etc.). Both print and televised media managed to go the duration of the war without showing even ONE photo of the 10,000 innocent Iraqis who died needlessly in the conflict. This was a masterstroke of such calculated cynicism that it hardly deserves comment. It shouldn't surprise anyone, then, that there was no mention of the estimated 5,000 cluster bombs that were dumped on the Iraqi population by US and British aircraft. I'm sure that the media czars realized that footage of disfigured, dead Iraqis might not shore up support for the Bush Crusade.

Following the war, it has been basically more of the same. Unlike the UK where reporters from the BBC have fulfilled their "watchdog" role by relentlessly holding the Blair Government accountable for misleading the British public, here, in the "land of the free," the Bush Administration's prevarication, obfuscation, and boldfaced lies have been treated with a "business as usual" attitude by his obsequious friends in the press. Neither Congress nor the media have made any serious attempt to investigate the obvious deceptions and fabrications that steered the country to war.

This can only be considered a catastrophic failure in the system and a blow to the idea of transparency in government.

You have to give the Bush Administration credit: they knew from the onset that their extreme right wing agenda had no chance of being executed without a subservient and well oiled propaganda machine. The "information management" by the state/media alliance functioned at a level of efficiency that would have made the Soviets envious.

The people of the US are only beginning to grasp the tyranny that naturally flows from a monopolistic, corporate media. We were hoodwinked into a war that was intrinsically immoral, and now, we are painted with the same brush in the eyes of the world as the criminals in the White House.

The betrayal of the media is, perhaps, more excruciating than Bush's adventurism. There's simply no way a democracy can survive without an informed public, and yet, as the media giants continue to consolidate, the hard facts get more scarce and the likelihood of the truth leeching out gets even more remote.

I hope that team working at Al Jazeerah will take their charge as disseminators of the truth more seriously than their counterparts in the States.

No one in the United States ever believed we would be looking to Doha for lessons in free speech.

But, that's what it has come to.