RE: virus: FW: News Coverage as a Weapon
« Reply #31 on: 2004-05-22 11:56:10 »
Erik Aronesty Sent: 22 May 2004 04:32 PM To: Church of Virus Subject: Re: virus: FW: News Coverage as a Weapon
: Blunderov, I wish you were my : daddy....
Me too! Can we have a vote on it on the site?
"Do you wish Blunderov was your daddy?" Yes/No --- [Blunderov] By all means Gather round children, and hear the story of the Big Bad Bush and the Nuclear Weapons. Are you sitting comfortably? Good, then I'll begin.
Once upon a time there was a Big Bad Bush and a noble Rhinoceros...
Re:virus: FW: News Coverage as a Weapon
« Reply #32 on: 2004-05-22 13:51:35 »
[simul] Me too! Can we have a vote on it on the site? "Do you wish Blunderov was your daddy?" Yes/No
[Blunderov] By all means Gather round children, and hear the story of the Big Bad Bush and the Nuclear Weapons. Are you sitting comfortably? Good, then I'll begin.
Once upon a time there was a Big Bad Bush and a noble Rhinoceros...
RE: virus: FW: News Coverage as a Weapon
« Reply #33 on: 2004-05-22 14:36:32 »
rhinoceros Sent: 22 May 2004 07:52 PM
[simul] Me too! Can we have a vote on it on the site? "Do you wish Blunderov was your daddy?" Yes/No
[Blunderov] By all means Gather round children, and hear the story of the Big Bad Bush and the Nuclear Weapons. Are you sitting comfortably? Good, then I'll begin.
Once upon a time there was a Big Bad Bush and a noble Rhinoceros...
Are some Americans, including journalists, rooting for the enemy while their country is at war? This question is coming up with increasing frequency as the troubles in Iraq continue.
The May 15 issue of the British magazine The Spectator published an article [free reg. req.] by Daily Telegraph correspondent Toby Harnden, recounting a conversation he had with an unnamed "American magazine journalist of serious accomplishment and impeccable liberal credentials."
According to Harnden, "Not only had she 'known' the Iraq war would fail, but she considered it essential that it did so because this would ensure that the `evil' George W. Bush would no longer be running her country. Her editors back on the East Coast were giggling, she said, over what a disaster Iraq had turned out to be. `Lots of us talk about how awful it would be if this worked out.' " Harnden goes on to say that when he asked the woman if "thousands more dead Iraqis would be a good thing," her answer was, essentially, yes.
If this story”tailor-made to confirm every conservative's worst suspicions about the media establishment”is true, it illustrates a repugnant mentality.
But some of those criticizing such attitudes reveal a mindset that, in some ways, is equally misguided. On the widely read Instapundit.com weblog, University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds writes, "To explain things in words of few syllables: It's wrong to root for your country's defeat." Reynolds adds that it's especially wrong "when that defeat would mean the death of innocents" and "when it's merely for domestic political advantage." It's hard to disagree with the last two statements. But what about the sweeping assertion that rooting for your country's defeat is wrong?
This view is hardly limited to Reynolds alone. The other day on the Fox News Channel news show From the Heartland, while interviewing left-wing cartoonist Ted Rall, host and former congressman John Kasich expressed dismay and shock that anyone could root against their own country in a war.
Yet what if your country, or your government, is engaged in a war that is unjust and immoral? What if it's your country that is wantonly killing innocents, as well as sacrificing the lives of its own soldiers for no good reason?
I should point out that none of this, in my view, is true of the war in Iraq. History's final verdict on this war is still a long way from being in. Yet, it is an indisputable fact that, for good or bad reasons, we went to war against a brutal, sadistic regime in Iraq”a regime that was the worst enemy of its own people. It is also a fact that, for the most part, the United States has gone to great lengths to avoid injury and death to civilians. Indeed, despite all the troubles, polls have shown that a majority of Iraqis still believe that the US-led war was right and that it has made their lives better.
I should also note that in this case, the gloating over our failures in Iraq can be downright obscene. Rall, who debated Kasich on war and patriotism on Fox News, has mocked former football player Pat Tillman, killed in action in Afghanistan, as a "sap" who joined the army after the Sept. 11 attacks because he wanted to "kill Arabs."
Michael Moore, the so-called documentary filmmaker, compares the Iraqi insurgents”who indiscriminately kill their own compatriots”to the fighters of the American revolution. He also states that US forces should stay in Iraq because we must pay with our blood for this war. None of these folks show much concern for the Iraqis victimized by Saddam Hussein and his minions, or by the terrorists today.
But "my country, right or wrong" is not an answer to these ideologues. Such an attitude is worthy of the Soviet Union (where, surely, it wasn't wrong for dissidents to root against their government during the war in Czechoslovakia in 1968 or in Afghanistan in the 1980s), not of a free country.
Ironically, the same conservatives who believe that no decent American can sympathize with the other side during a war also generally believe that our troops in Iraq deserve the support of the Iraqis because we liberated them from an evil regime. Yet, following their logic, patriotic Iraqis would have had to support a homegrown tyrant over foreign occupation.
The difference, of course, is that we're not a dictatorship. So let's not demand mindless, knee-jerk patriotism as if we were. I want to support my country because it's right, not just because it's mine.
Cathy Young is a Reason contributing editor. This column appeared in the Boston Globe on May 24, 2004.
"Political debate began to decline around the turn of the century [1900], curiously enough at a time when the press was becoming more 'responsible,' more professional, more conscious of its civic obligations." -- Chistopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites, chapter 9 ("The Lost Art of Argument")
In Iraq, today's militia fights, terrorist attacks, and occasional outbreaks of mob violence are significant because they take place in the context of two larger wars. One is the war between the civilized world and radical Islam. The other is the war between the media elite and conservatives. However things turn out in Iraq, the relationship between the American people and the media is never going to be the same.
Christopher Lasch's thesis was that the media elite derives its self-image from the position articulated by Walter Lippman in the 1920's, which is that the general public is incompetent to evaluate political argument. It follows that the duty of the press is to supply an objective picture of reality. A news outlet must not be seen as participating in an equal conversation with its audience, but instead must be viewed as standing on a higher pedestal. To achieve this position, facts must be kept separate from opinion.
This distinction between facts and opinion is never as clearcut in practice as it might appear in theory. Lasch would have argued that people are best informed by an overall point of view that provides context for facts, rather than by an attempt to pretend that opinion can be filtered out of a story.
One could make a case that the clashes taking place in Iraq today have little bearing on that country's ultimate future. In the long run, whether Iraq is able to modernize or not, whether ethnic diversity divides the country or not, and whether democratic institutions take root or the country reverts to strongman rule all depend primarily on the internal dynamics of its people and culture.
Meanwhile, here in the United States, the forty-years war between the media and conservative Republicans is reaching a climax.
1964: The Agony of the GOP
In 1964, Robert Novak was a young journalist covering the campaign for the Republican Party nomination, won by Barry Goldwater. His subsequent book, The Agony of the GOP, 1964, dramatically describes a scene at the party's convention, held at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. At one point, a speaker (I believe it was former President Eisenhower, appearing via remote hookup on screen), denounced the news media. This produced a thunderous response from the audience, which Novak described as standing up, shouting, and shaking its fists at the press gallery.
In 1964, Novak and the rest of the press were shocked at the behavior of the Republican delegates. That was a time when the media's aura of Lippman-esque objectivity was unquestioned.
By the time of the convention, the press had painted Goldwater into a corner as an ignoramus, a nut, and an extremist. The reality, even most liberals would now agree, was the opposite. Goldwater was sober and reflective -- one of the most cerebral political figures of his era. In fact, it was Goldwater's opponent, Lyndon Johnson, whose ego and insecurity were obstacles to seeing reality and making sound decisions.
1973: Woodstein
In 1972, the American voters overwhelmingly rejected the Democratic candidate for President, George McGovern. Two years later, however, the Democratic Party won decisive control of Congress, and two years after that Jimmy Carter won the Presidency.
The event that intervened to change the political dynamic was the Watergate investigation. Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein played a major role in breaking open the cover-up. As a result, the mainstream press reached its apogee of prestige, and conservatism appeared to be moribund.
1980: Reagan
The myth of media omniscience was punctured somewhat by the Ronald Reagan presidency. Reagan's election victory took place in spite of a media portrayal that was reminiscent of Goldwater's. Like all conservative politicians, Reagan was characterized as stupid and out of the mainstream. But the American people, feeling frustrated by inflation at home and humiliated by the Iranian hostage crisis abroad, dumped President Carter.
During the Reagan Administration, the catastrophes predicted by his opponents and echoed in the mainstream media failed to materialize. Instead of leading to higher inflation and interest rates, his tax cuts were accompanied by disinflation due to conservative monetary policy. Instead of leading to nuclear holocaust, his defense policy contributed to the downfall of the Soviet Union.
The 1990's: "right-wing media"
The 1990's saw the emergence of conservative points of view in the media, most notably in talk radio. However, the mainstream press continued to view itself as the objective and professional Lippman-esque ideal, as opposed to "right-wing media."
Iraq: The Battle for Hearts and Minds
The war in Iraq has produced a battle for hearts and minds -- not over there so much as over here. The left, including most news reporters, is determined that the American people should view the situation in Iraq as chaotic, our presence there as a mistake, the prospects for success dismal, and our leadership as incompetent. News that fits this story line is emphasized, and news that contradicts it tends to be buried.
Glenn Reynolds pointed out that a recent poll suggests that this battle for hearts and minds is not going well for the left. One question, in particular, found that 60 percent of Americans surveyed were more upset by the beheading of Nick Berg than by the prisoner abuse scandal, while only 8 percent of those surveyed were more upset by the latter.
Perhaps this will change over the next year or two, if Iraq remains violent and unstable. This would serve to vindicate some of the opinions of the media elite, but it would not restore the impression of their neutrality. Moreover, if the situation deteriorates in Iraq, Americans will not necessarily gravitate toward the position that the Administration's intentions were evil and/or its execution was incompetent. Much of the blame may fall on the Iraqis themselves. The hearts and minds of the public are unlikely to be won over to the positions held by the left.
In fact, a debacle in Iraq could backfire for the liberal media. Suppose that the post-mortem on Iraq reads, "The media weren't reporting. They were taking sides. With our enemies. And our enemies won. Because, under media assault, we lost our will to fight on." In fact, that is what Ralph Peters wrote about Falluja.
I believe that if the liberal media wants to win the battle for the hearts and minds of America, the first step will be to admit, "We are the liberal media."
That is, they should drop the pretense of Lippman-esque detached objectivity and instead acknowledge that they have a partisan position. From that perspective, they will realize that in order to shape others' opinions one has to understand and appreciate the opposing point of view, rather than assume a posture of know-it-all arrogance.
The Future of Debate
The outcome of the forty-years war could turn out to be the end of the myth of unbiased news media. A large portion of the American people will never again believe that the news pages are objective, just as they will no longer believe that the UN is moral or that college professors have worldly wisdom.
Instead, it will be understood that all reporting combines opinion with observation. People who want to be well informed will choose to read a variety of sources.
Even if reporters are forced to descend from their Lippman-esque thrones, research and fact-finding will continue to be important functions. However, the process will become more democratic. If a blogger calling himself "wretchard" can come closer than any newspaper to ferreting out the wedding party incident, so be it. I believe that if Christopher Lasch were alive today, he would find in blogging the revival of the lost art of argument.
"But for the most part," Michael Barone wrote in a column earlier this week, "[Franklin] Roosevelt did not have to deal with one problem Bush faces today. And that is that today's press works to put the worst possible face on the war."
Instead of being greeted with the howls of mockery it richly deserved, this hyperbolic rant was greeted as Important Media Criticism all over the pro-war blogosphere.
"Is this an exaggeration?" asked the apparently plural James Taranto of Opinion Journal. "We'd have to say not."
Well, we'd have to say that many of the same people who two years ago were making great hay about the anti-war Left's shrillness and hyperbole have increasingly failed to recognize the condition when it afflicts their own ranks. Let's take Barone's statement literally for a moment: Today's press -- not some of today's press, or particular section of today's press, but today's press -- "works to put the worst possible face on the war."
Let's imagine if that were true. Take the British news agency Reuters, a favored Taranto whipping boy for its "anti-American propaganda." If Reuters was working to put the worst possible face on the war, to spread its pernicious anti-American propaganda, what would it do if, say, three of its employees claimed to be physically and sexually abused, Abu Ghraib-style, at an Iraqi prison, by Americans who knew they were reporters? It'd be at the top of the newswire immediately, right?
Here's what Reuters actually did -- sat on the story for more than four months. And yet Abu Ghraib is precisely the evidence Taranto and Barone muster in their next supporting sentences. Barone: "Hence the endless dwelling on the abuses in the Abu Ghraib prison and the breathless speculation that it would drive Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld from office." Taranto: "Consider the press's obsession with the Abu Ghraib prison abuses. Sure, it's a big and important story, but as others have pointed out, it's far from the only story in Iraq. Why, for example, did it get so much more coverage than the murder by terrorists of American civilian Nick Berg?"
So, heavy coverage of Abu Ghraib = "work[ing] to place the worst possible face on the war"? To believe this, you have to believe in a popular false god of the age-old Media Bias debate, namely that bias = agenda. Among news organizations that purport to truly pursue a fair and balanced presentation to a mass audience -- I'm talking here about large daily newspapers, network news shows, the generalist weekly news magazines -- bias may certainly be rampant, but agendas (especially on grave national-interest issues) are actually rare.
That's why former New York Times editor Howell Raines' crusade against the men-only rules of the Augusta National Golf Club stuck out like such a sore thumb. We expect our general-interest news outlets -- even those that skew to a specific audience in a highly competitive news market -- to cover and uncover news, not create it.
To me, the most convincing argument in the Media Bias debate has always been that the fish don't feel the water: that journalists at general-interest news organizations don't even recognize that their personal biases tilt in a certain direction, and affect news judgment.
This was borne out nicely in the just-released journalist survey [PDF] by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, showing that A) a far greater percentage of the national press self-identify as "liberal" or "moderate" (34 percent and 54 percent) than does the general public (20 percent/41 percent), and B) self-identified media liberals and self-identified media conservatives have drastically different opinions on the press' performance (for example, 53 percent of conservative journalists say the media has been "too hard" on President Bush, compared to only 3 percent of liberal journalists).
No doubt this shows how ideology can affect news judgment. But the dominant paradigm in general-interest newsgathering over the past four decades has been to attempt to overcome biases and deliver relatively agenda-free news. This paradigm is now under attack (and a long-overdue one, in my book), by the same forces that are disrupting the monopolist conditions that reinforced it. But to state that journalists themselves have basically abandoned this model is either to display a shocking ignorance of the modern newsroom, or to play down to the worst suspicions of a partisan readership.
Mort Kondracke, in another widely praised column last week, took the leap from the agenda-accusation, straight to the pre-emptive blame-laying: "The American establishment, led by the media and politicians, is in danger of talking the United States into defeat in Iraq," he warned. "And the results would be catastrophic."
This claim, which Glenn Reynolds called a "must-read warning to congress and the media," again rests on the idea that the explicit goal of American journalists is to produce American failure in Iraq. And it also suggests a rather unseemly condescension toward the lowly American citizen -- are we suddenly such sheep that the All-Powerful Media dictates our opinion?
Truth is, if you want your news filtered by people itching to Finish the Job in Iraq, there is no shortage of media outlets, thanks to an increasingly robust and fragmented market. The O'Reilly Factor is a no-Abu Ghraib-image zone, for those sick of the story (or those who, like Trent Lott, don't really understand why it's a controversy).
But claiming that the U.S. media is waging a conscious campaign to make America lose -- and that it has the power to pull it off -- smacks not only of delusion, but a kind of desperation as well.
For the media the mistreatment of the prisoners in Iraq has been like chum thrown to starving sharks. Their continuing obsession with this story tells us much about the pathologies that afflict the media and raises anew the issue that first hit the national consciousness in Vietnam: how should a modern high-tech media view their obligations to their own country and their fellow citizens?
The problems go beyond the obvious partisan and ideological bias of major media. Of course the media are liberal and favor the Democratic Party, in which some eighty percent of them are registered. Here's a simple experiment that shows this tilt: keep track of how often the media use the words "right" or "right-wing" compared to "left" and "left-wing." The former appears much more frequently, while "liberal" usually substitutes for "left." The subtle result is to camouflage leftist ideas as more mainstream and acceptable ("liberal") and conservative as more extreme ("right-wing").
But we all know that. Equally important are the other factors that determine how the media report what they call "news." The most obvious involves the selection of what to cover and emphasize. How do you decide which fact is worthy of coverage? What is more "newsworthy": prison guards abusing their charges or soldiers reopening a school? Civilian casualties or the measures taken to prevent them? You know which is more newsworthy to the media, who have devoted immense amounts of coverage to the prison scandal and civilian deaths in Iraq, at the expense of the more positive stories.
But if the media are really, as they claim, merely "objective" recorders of the facts, then surely they would at least cover the negative and positive facts equally. Indeed, one could argue that in the context of war, civilian deaths or abuse of detainees isn't really "news" but an unfortunate constant of war. What is really "news" in Iraq is that the U.S. military has taken remarkable steps to minimize civilian casualties, and is attempting an unprecedented task: to destroy an enemy and rebuild a society simultaneously. Certainly that wasn't the tack taken in WWII, when Japan and Germany were literally destroyed before the task of rebuilding began.
The "news" in Iraq, then, isn't the behavior of the prison guards, for such brutality occurs every day in every prison in America. If there had been a cover-up, then that would be newsworthy, but the only reason the media know about the story is because the military initiated an investigation. What the whole sorry episode shows is not the failure of the military or the administration, but rather the constant reality of evil in human hearts, an evil that war has always provided an excuse to indulge. That out of 150,000 troops in Iraq a dozen would be sadists should not surprise us.
Another problem with the media is their failure to provide an adequate context for the "facts" that usually are presented in isolation. Sometimes this context is historical: for example, what sorts of things typically have happened in wars? Civilian casualties, massacres, rape, death from friendly fire, execution of prisoners, torture, all have occurred in war throughout history. Unleashing the violence of human beings is never neat or precise. We try to have in place laws, training, and regulations that minimize such brutalities, but they will still occur and have to be accepted--though never condoned-- as part of the cost of resorting to force. Again, what needs emphasizing is not the constant brutality of war but the novel attempts to create a free, functioning society in a land that has never known one. When we condemn the bad, we need also to remember the worse.
To mention this larger context does not excuse the behavior, of course. To say that getting shot in the head is worse than getting stabbed in the arm is not to approve of wanton arm-stabbing. But the media needs to keep the proper perspective and judge actions by the standard not of perfection but of flawed human nature and the complexity and unforeseen consequences of all action. One way to do this is to be careful with language. In describing the abuse in Abu Ghraib, the New York Times' favorite word is "horrific." If intimidation and humiliation are "horrific," what word do we use to describe Auschwitz, or what went on in Abu Ghraib under Hussein? The use of such rhetoric is a sure sign that partisan interpretation rather than objective reporting is driving the news.
The problems of selection and context are increased exponentially with photographs and video. Such pictures seem to present an unvarnished reality, and their immediacy and drama have an impact that affects us emotionally--which means that we are likely to have feelings about the actions rather than rational thoughts. Moreover, a camera has to be pointed by someone who decides where to point it, and then the image is edited or cropped. Remember all that footage from Pakistan showing anti-American street demonstrations? I happened to see some other footage of one of those demonstrations that covered what the news-camera didn't: the more numerous people on the sidewalks ignoring the demonstration or watching it with obvious disapproval. If all you had seen were the demonstration, you'd think the whole country was ready to explode with anti-American fury.
The impact of a dramatic image is so great that often its meaning can't be corrected even when the explanatory context is provided. A few years back the whole world was galvanized by footage of a Palestinian father and his small son pinned down by Israeli and Palestinian terrorist fire until the boy was shot to death. Immediately the image produced its own emotional interpretation: the Israelis are wanton destroyers of innocent Palestinians. A later exhaustive investigation revealed that the boy was most likely killed by Palestinian guerillas. Yet like the so-called "Jenin massacre," this "truth" once released could not be corrected and continues to create a false impression.
The most notorious example, for us Americans, of the power of misleading media coverage, particularly visual media, is the 1968 Tet offensive during the war in Vietnam. Images of Viet Cong in the heart of Saigon and dead Americans in the U.S. embassy grounds created an interpretation of North Vietnamese prowess and U.S. weakness, when in actual fact Tet was a failure for the North and a display of American military brilliance by any just standard. But the images created their own reality.
We see this same phenomenon today in Iraq, where the images of abused Iraqi prisoners, dead troops, and grieving civilians are creating a distorted picture of American failure and corruption, when in fact a whole reality outside the frame of the pictures suggests that steady progress is being made towards pacifying the insurgents and handing Iraq back to the Iraqi people.
The standard response of the media to such criticism is that they are performing a public service by functioning as "watchdogs" that monitor the government and guard the public weal. Yet as the Roman poet Juvenal asked, "Who guards the guardians?" Especially guardians that are for-profit enterprises subject only to the forces of the market? If you hate George Bush, you can work to defeat him in November. But the New York Times or CBS are never going to be subjected to such accountability. They can't be voted out of office. You can choose not to use their product, but that doesn't mean their influence will not still be felt, particularly in the case of the Times, which establishes for other media what should be covered.
Finally, and most importantly, where ultimately do the loyalties of the media lie? To profit, professional standards, or partisan ideology? And what if pursuing these harms the interests of their own country? We are not asking that the media be cheerleaders for the government, but simply be objective and fair in their coverage and not work actively against the aims pursued by a democratically elected administration, particularly when the lives of fellow Americans are at stake.
[Blunderov] An article which in my view has almost no redeeming features. It amounts to whining that the news is not covered in a manner congenial to the author's preconceptions.
A central flaw is that it fails to realize that virtue is its own reward. The contention that, for instance, 'Dog declines to bite passing man' should be reported if the press is to be considered truly 'objective' is risible to me.
Anyway, where is it written that it is the function of the press to be objective? It is the function of the press to be critical in the same way that it is the function of watch-dogs to bite.
Touching for a moment on the 'liberal press', assuming for a moment that there is in fact any such beast at all, how do we account for its existence? I would be inclined to ascribe it to superior intelligence, education and critical thinking skills finding their natural expression in a free society. So if this is what 'liberal press' means, then I'm all for it.
Best Regards
PS I have to assume that Bruce Thornton is a member of that other sterling institution the 'illiberal press'.
Actually, Thornton is a professor at a California university. People implicitly expect to have their news reflect a valid representation of the actual state or process of affairs as far as the subject of the reportage is concerned. Unfortunately, this expectation is unfulfilled, due to the twin pressures of 'if it bleeds, it leads' (negative news and setbacks are 'sexier' that positive news and accomplishments), and the liberal (translation, anti-bush, therefore anti-war) bias of reporters. I'm not saying that they all do so consciously (although many do); it's just that when you are swimming in the same anti-Bush and anti-war stream as your fellow fishes, the water in which your school swims and which buoys most of you along is invisible to you (but not to the populace at large, which is why news reporters rank around the level of used-car salesmen and repo men in the trust and respect granted to them by the general citizenry).
RE: virus: FW: News Coverage as a Weapon
« Reply #42 on: 2004-05-29 07:23:47 »
Joe Dees Sent: 29 May 2004 12:31 PM
Actually, Thornton is a professor at a California university. People implicitly expect to have their news reflect a valid representation of the actual state or process of affairs as far as the subject of the reportage is concerned. Unfortunately, this expectation is unfulfilled, due to the twin pressures of 'if it bleeds, it leads' (negative news and setbacks are 'sexier' that positive news and accomplishments), and the liberal (translation, anti-bush, therefore anti-war) bias of reporters. I'm not saying that they all do so consciously (although many do); it's just that when you are swimming in the same anti-Bush and anti-war stream as your fellow fishes, the water in which your school swims and which buoys most of you along is invisible to you (but not to the populace at large, which is why news reporters rank around the level of used-car salesmen and repo men in the trust and respect granted to them by the general citizenry).
---- [Blunderov] Surely though, the properties of water are universal? In which case the waters in which pro-Bush, pro-war fishes swim should be invisible to them too?
I came across just such a fish the other day; 'The National Review On-line'. It was too small so I threw it back.
Actually, Thornton is a professor at a California university. People implicitly expect to have their news reflect a valid representation of the actual state or process of affairs as far as the subject of the reportage is concerned. Unfortunately, this expectation is unfulfilled, due to the twin pressures of 'if it bleeds, it leads' (negative news and setbacks are 'sexier' that positive news and accomplishments), and the liberal (translation, anti-bush, therefore anti-war) bias of reporters. I'm not saying that they all do so consciously (although many do); it's just that when you are swimming in the same anti-Bush and anti-war stream as your fellow fishes, the water in which your school swims and which buoys most of you along is invisible to you (but not to the populace at large, which is why news reporters rank around the level of used-car salesmen and repo men in the trust and respect granted to them by the general citizenry).
---- [Blunderov] Surely though, the properties of water are universal? In which case the waters in which pro-Bush, pro-war fishes swim should be invisible to them too?
I came across just such a fish the other day; 'The National Review On-line'. It was too small so I threw it back.
The prevailing media bias is too pervasive to be missed by those who do not share it; thus their own dissenting views are visible to them also, by contrast. And the National Review is a mixed bag composed of many contributers; some cluelessly dogmatic ideologues interspersed with some truly reflective commentary. The same is true to, varying degrees of the New Republic and the Weekly Standard, as well as Slate, Salon, the Asia Times, Tech Central Station, Reason , Insight, the Nation and Spiked Online.
Reuters' Angry Iraqi The aggressively neutral news service always manages to find Iraqi men-on-the-street who hate America. Coincidence? by Dan Dickinson
WHEN THE IRAQI GOVERNING COUNCIL announced the appointment of British educated neurologist and anti-Saddam dissident Iyad Allawi as Iraq's new Interim Prime Minister on May 28, you would think that many Iraqis would have approved of the choice, or at least seen Allawi's selection as a sign that the U.S. led occupation was at last starting to wind down.
But that's not how Iraqis saw it, at least according to Michael Georgy, a Baghdad reporter of the British owned Reuters, a 153-year-old institution that bills itself as the world's largest multimedia news agency. In a "man on the street" piece, Georgy couldn't find a single Iraqi who had a good thing to say about Allawi, or, for that matter, the United States. "Iraq is the same as under Saddam Hussein," said one hotel manager whom Georgy reports "refused to give his name." "I reject him," declared Hassan Ali, a policeman.
Just a few days earlier, President Bush outlined his commitment to a free Iraq and an end to the occupation in an address seen in both the U.S. and Iraq.
The Iraqis, this time according to Reuters' Alastair MacDonald, didn't like that, either. "Bush is a scorpion. He is a liar," opined policeman Ayman Haidar. Again, no one could be found to say a good word about anything the Coalition does.
Nor is this detestation of all things American a recent development in Reuters' reporting. Indeed, from the start of the war, Reuters' quotes make it very clear that virtually everyone in this country of 25 million, with its contending ethnic groups and its history of enduring one of the twentieth century's most savage dictatorships, is united in at least one respect - they all hate Bush and America. No matter whom Reuters talks to, be they Sunnis, Shiites, or Kurds, male or female, they are all mad as hell, and they are not going to take it any more. Collectively, they are the "Angry Iraqi."
THE ANGRY IRAQI first made his appearance at the start of the war, as Coalition troops raced through Umm Qasr on their way to Baghdad. While reporters from other organizations saw crowds giving Coalition troops the thumbs up and people tearing Saddam posters off the wall, Reuters found the Angry Iraqi. "We don't want Americans here," said one Hussein to Reuters correspondent Rosalind Russell. Another defiantly pulled a picture of the dictator out of his waistband. "Saddam is our leader. Saddam is good." Did anyone favor liberation? Clearly, if anyone did, Russell couldn't find them. On the same day--March 23, 2003--up the road in Shiite Safwan, Reuters' Michael Georgy had a real scoop. A few days into the war, Iraqis already had decided that the occupation was a failure. "I swear it was better when Saddam was here," claimed one Jamal Kathim, whose "angry friends" all nodded in agreement. "The Americans and British said this was going to be a liberation but it is an occupation," said one Majid, who, at age 15, was clearly a good source for sophisticated geopolitical analysis.
ONCE COALITION FORCES had taken Baghdad, to the seeming jubilation of at least some, Reuters' Angry Iraqi was unimpressed. Following the looting of the Iraqi National Museum, an event that would later turn out to be far less serious than initially reported and mostly an inside job, Reuters quickly determined who was responsible. The looters? Certainly not, at least according to Tareq Abdulrazak, whom Reuters identified as a "scientist." "The Americans watched this happen. It is not enough to destroy our buildings, our people? Now our history, too?"
By April 23, some three weeks into the occupation, the Angry Iraqi was back at it, declaring that it was time for the Coalition to shove off. Reuters' Rosalind Russell, in a rare admission, reported that most Iraqis were glad to be rid of Saddam. But now it was time for us to leave. Americans are "stupid people," claimed a medical student. "They are treating us badly." Americans go home!" chanted a demonstration of the "National Front of Intellectuals," who was mad at the arrest of their leader, which they described as "a brutal, terrorist act."
Why was their leader arrested? Just what is this "National Front" and what is their agenda? Reporter Russell showed little curiosity about that, just as Reuters reporters are uniformly uninterested in the truth of reports of American atrocities and abuses. In story after story, the most outrageous anti-Coalition charges are voiced. Time after time, there are no follow up questions, and claims are never checked out. If someone says he's been abused, to Reuters is must be so.
THUS IT HAS GONE. In late April 2004 when some Iraqis were killed by what any objective review would seem to have been a terrorist assault on an arms dump, the Angry Iraqi, according to Reuters' Georgy, knew who to blame. "First we had Saddam and then we were given Bush," says one woman. "What have we done to deserve this?" "Those Americans did this," said another.
Nor does the Angry Iraqi attribute any of the problems their country has experienced since the liberation to terrorists or Baathists, at least according to Reuters. In fact--and Michael Georgy should get a Pulitzer for yet another scoop--it turns out that there aren't any Baathists at all! In a July 2003 report we learn, courtesy of one Sheik Kassem Sudani, that "The Baath is gone and the Americans know it. . . . Every time there is an attack on their troops they say it was the terrorists of the Baath. That's what the Baath did. They always blame someone else."
When U.S. forces succeeded in killing Uday and Qusay Hussein, an event other reports said was largely celebrated throughout the country, Michael Georgy could only find Iraqis who were outraged. "We will fight and fight until they leave," said Badr Mohammed--another of Reuters' eloquent 15-year-old sources.
MORE RECENTLY, Reuters' attention has fallen on Moktada al Sadr's abortive anti-Coalition rebellion where. "You Americans, do not fall into a quagmire," warned Sadr City Sheik Nassar al Saedi, "Rivers of your blood will flow." Reuters then goes on to cite their usual collection of America haters, who "damn [us] always."
What's going on here? Do Iraqis hate us with such complete uniformity? Polls, most recently a March 2004 ABC News survey show that Iraqis are as divided about the war as we are. According to the review, 48 percent of Iraqis thought the United States was right to invade; 51 percent want coalition forces gone, though in months, not immediately, 39 percent want Coalition troops to stay. Though Reuters reports prominently feature Iraqis who favor the slaughtering of Coalition forces, only 17 percent of Iraqis favor attacks while 78 percent oppose them.
Overall, despite the uniform view of Reuters' Angry Iraqi that things are worse in Iraq because of the invasion, only 19 percent of those surveyed agree while 23 percent say conditions are the same, and 56 percent say they are better.
To read Reuters, you would think that Iraqis' first priority is ejecting Coalition forces, preferably in body bags. The ABC poll says that the biggest concern of Iraqis (64 percent) is "Regaining public security."
ARE REUTERS REPORTERS the victims of chance? Have they simply not been able to find Iraqis who think well of the Coalition and see their lot as improving? Perhaps. Or perhaps there's something more going on.
According to the "Trust Principles" posted on their website, Reuters is "committed to reporting the facts. . . . We do not take sides. . . . Reuters' journalists do not offer opinions or views." (Indeed, days after the September 11 attacks, Reuters took down the digital U.S. flag that was displayed outside its New York office in Times Square. It didn't want anyone to conclude that it supported the United States, as opposed to Osama Bin Laden.)
Yet the "Trust Policy" gives Reuters reporters a more subtle way to editorialize. We "avoid the use of emotive terms," it says, "[E]xcept when we are quoting someone directly or in indirect speech." Since Reuters reporters aren't allowed to tell readers what they think about the Coalition and George Bush, they let the Angry Iraqi do it for them.
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