The Link Between The Media, The War, And Our Right To Know
By Danny Schechter
News Dissector
By now, all of us realize that there is a high powered media campaign aimed at promoting the war on Iraq and shaping the views of the American people, relying on a media-savvy political strategy to sell the administration’s priorities and policies.
There is an intimate link between the media, the war, and the Bush administration that many activists are even unaware of.
Few administrations in history have been as adept at using polling, focus groups, “perception managers,” spinners, and I.O. or “information operations” specialists to sell slogans to further a “patriotically correct” climate. Orchestrating media coverage is one of their most well-honed skills, aided and abetted by professional PR firms, corporate consultants, and media outlets.
Our Republican Guard relies on Murdoch-owned media assets like the Fox News Channel, supportive newspapers, aggressive talk radio hosts, conservative columnists, and an arsenal of on-air pundits adept at polarizing opinion and devaluing independent journalism.
They benefit from a media environment shaped by a wave of media consolidation that has led to the number of companies controlling our media drop from fifty to between five and seven in just ten years. Then there is the merger of news biz and show biz. Entertainment-oriented reality shows help depoliticize viewers while sensation-driven cable news limits analytical journalism and in-depth issue-oriented coverage.
Is it any wonder that most Americans admit to being uninformed about many of the key issues we confront? Is it surprising that many blindly follow feel-good slogans or appeals to national unity and conformity? This media problem is at the heart of all the issues that we face. And it is getting worse not better.
If we want to save our democracy, we have to press the media to do its constitutionally protected job as a watchdog on people in power. We must insist that all views be given access, and that concerns of critics of this administration be heard and debated.
We live in a climate where even journalists are being intimidated for stepping out of line. In Iraq, the hotel assigned to journalists was fired on by soldiers, who killed two media workers. In the U.S., Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh was baited as a “media terrorist” by Pentagon advisor Richard Perle. . Hundreds of journalists were “embedded” to sanitize war coverage. Independent journalists were harassed or ignored. Antiwar commercials have been suppressed and censored, while conservative talking-heads outnumber all others by several hundred percent.