This article could be placed

A Guy Called LULU — Tue, 10 Feb 2015 19:09:41 +0000

This article could be placed as a comment on any of several issues I have spent time with. It could go as a comment on the blog about Brian Williams' mini-scandal but I believe that placing it here as a comment on what I consider to be a major scandal is more appropriate. It is a long and, IMO, very well written article. Some teaser paragraphs from " I misremember Iraq".

Alas, all this means is that “the news presenter creates a socially acceptable persona.” But buried in that bland description is the reality. Williams, like the modern news business, is a construct of his audience. He challenges nobody: he sensitively serves up fictions they long to see and hear.

“A disciplined and well-organized news and opinion campaign” brought the press to heel, Massing declared, “directed by conservatives and the Christian right.” Paul Krugman, in 2004, pointed to “the role of intimidation” in silencing criticism. “If you were thinking of saying anything negative about the president, you had to be prepared for an avalanche of hate mail. You had to expect right-wing pundits and publications to do all they could to ruin your reputation.” I remember (I think) a short essay by Susan Sontag in late September 2001 that asserted simply:

This was not a “cowardly” attack on “civilization” or “liberty” or “humanity” or “the free world” but an attack on the world’s self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions … A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened.
Sullivan answered by calling her “contemptible” and a “pretentious buffoon”; others dubbed her “moral idiot” and “traitor.” The New Republic asked, “What do Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and Susan Sontag have in common?” Historical awareness was an orphan in the new permanent now. -

While Williams dodged imaginary bullets in Iraq, his employers axed Phil Donahue’s talk show because, an internal network report warned, he presented a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war. . . . He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration’s motives.” The show risked becoming “a home for the liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.” Meanwhile, the US dropped murderous cluster bombs, and laced munitions with poisonous depleted uranium. “These important stories,” writesNorman Solomon of the Institute for Public Accuracy, “became known to many news watchers on several continents. But not in the United States.”

One story is still emblematic. In March 2003, Iraqi troops captured Private Jessica Lynch, a 19 year-old from Palestine, West Virginia. American officials claimed she was wounded in a heroic fight, firing her weapon down to the last bullet. US special forces rescued her two weeks later from a hospital in Nasriyah; dramatic footage of the mission was broadcast worldwide.

Except, as David Dadge writes, “Lynch had not been wounded, she had not been tortured, and the raid by the Navy Seals was staged for the cameras. Indeed, her injuries were entirely consistent with a road traffic incident.” It took the BBC, not US media, to unravel the story: “one of the most stunning pieces of news management ever conceived.”

http://mondoweiss.net/2015/02/i-misremember-iraq

A continuing theme of my

A Guy Called LULU — Sun, 08 Feb 2015 18:52:23 +0000

In reply to A Rush to Judgment in Argentine Bomb Case?

A continuing theme of my contributions here at Dagblog is my belief that the U.S. people are subjects of, and very often victims of, propaganda [propaganda with the common derogatory connotation] originating in our own sphere. Following are a couple more links that I believe demonstrate how the framing of the news fits that charge.

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/more-recklessness-the-washi...

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-washington-post-the-most-reckles...

dagblog - Comments for "A Rush to Judgment in Argentine Bomb Case?"

This article could be placed

A continuing theme of my