UPDATED - ColdType

EMBEDDED: WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION
Carter, who handled media for President Carter,
said pretty much the same thing: “If I were the
government, I would be paying the press for the
coverage it is getting.”
That was a decade ago. Since then, many
believe the situation has deteriorated despite the
new technologies, embedded reporters and proliferation
of new 24-hour news networks. Richard
Goldstein sees almost a merging of interests in
an era of media mergers:
“There’s more to the collusion between the
networks and the Pentagon than ideology. Both
parties have an interest in creating a drama, one
that draws viewers into a web of associations,
producing thrills, chills, and secret delight.
These feelings are heightened by the belief that
they convey the real meaning of actual events.
The French, those weaselly surrender monkeys,
call this confluence of the virtual and the vérité
hyper-reality. It’s the grand illusion of our time.
“Hyper-reality is a fiction that presents itself as
fact. Its power is enhanced by churning Chyrons
and rolling ribbons of text. These signifiers of
“breaking news” are also a landscape that keeps
the eye alert and moving. Meanwhile anchors spin
the narrative thread. War wipes the usual smiles
from their faces, and they must maintain a tone of
reverent gravity however mesmerizing the
imagery. But every now and then, a burst from the
id lights up the commentary”
Lighting up is what U.S. bombs are doing to
Iraqi TV, as many news anchors ask, “Why have
we waited so long” to “take out” what they see as
a propaganda outlet. Journalists in Arab media
outlets feel the same way about U.S. stations and
and have begun lecturing their western counterparts
on what constitutes “real” journalism. (Significantly
the right-wing Fox News Channel in
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America has appropriated that very phrase,
“real journalism” as a branding device. Its competitor
MSNBC now runs promos saluting the
troops with the slogan, “God Bless America.” ●
MARCH 27: “A PREPOSTEROUS
FACSIMILE OF JOURNALISM”
FIRST, we were shocked but not always awed,
now we are getting bored. As TV news appears
more and more routine, on a “loop,” as one commentator
put it with appropriate sarcasm last
night, a tune-out is threatening. TV news is up
against the very condition that it has fostered
over the years – a short attention span.
Perhaps that’s why the three U.S. cable news
networks this morning took in the feed of a
nicely staged press conference with three
wounded soldiers from Germany where they are
hospitalized. U.S. revenge against German opposition
to the war did not include closing this
base. So for over a half hour in what is usually a
frenetic and well-formatted dash to offer more
news in less time, we heard all the details of how
they were shot. Being shot “sucks,” said one soldier
from Long Island who also revealed that he
and his unit watched videotapes of HBO’s “Band
of Brothers” before their work of liberation.
Maybe they should have watched “The Sopranos”
for a lesson on unconventional warfare.
Up close and personal
FOX NEWS predictably gushed that they were all
“profiles in courage” for defending that bridge the
way they did. This is a clue that more human