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State of the Union address, it was used anyway. A
media storm ensued only to be doused when the
president “accepted responsibility” and promptly
went on vacation. Throughout this controversy,
his supporters in the press and the Congress
were arguing that the weapons issue was never
all that important. Thomas Friedman in The New
York Times was now scolding the Administration
for raising the weapons issue in the first place
since Iraq, in his view, was always a “war of
choice,” not necessity. The rationales began to
shift like sand in the Arabian Desert.
THE FCC BACKGROUND BECOMES
THE FOREGROUND
DURING the war, media companies were lobbying
the FCC for regulatory concessions while at
the same time downplaying and barely covering
the FCC issue. Yet, thanks to brilliant grass roots
organizing, the issue mushroomed in importance.
More than a million people wrote the FCC
or their legislators opposing pro-industry rule
changes voted June 2. This is unprecedented.
Conservative and liberal groups made common
cause. The result: Congress voted 400-21 against
the Bush Administration policy, prompting a
threat of a veto.
Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz
was startled by the response. “Nobody much
likes Big Media these days,” he wrote. “But who
woulda thunk that it would become a hot political
issue? Not me … this issue has struck some
kind of nerve.”
New York Magazine’s Michael Wolff went further
in suggesting that there is a wave of revulsion
building against the media itself, as well as
the FCC. He told me in an interview: “We’re all
WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?
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media consumers. It stinks and nobody’s happy.
Nobody can find what they want. Nobody is
pleased … there are so many people who work
in the media business and those people are also
saying this stinks. These companies that we
work for don’t work anymore. They’re dysfunctional
because they’re too large and now you
want to make them bigger?”
The public has yet to turn against the media
for its propagandistic coverage but a wave of
scrutiny had finally begun. At last, the coverage
of the wars seemed to be striking a nerve, too,
within parts of the media world.
In England, the BBC coverage of the Blair government’s
dossier justifying the war became
embroiled in controversy with top government
officials and members of Parliament denouncing
its reporting. When the BBC’s principal source
of information, weapons expert David Kelly committed
suicide under intense pressure from the
government, the story dominated the headlines.
In retaliation, there were calls by Tony Blair’s
supporters for regulatory supervision of the BBC
by a new FCC-type commission called OFCOM.
While the Beeb defended its impartiality, a Cardiff
University study on its war coverage was released
documenting not an anti-war bias but a pro-government
tilt in much of its coverage.
JOURNALISTS DEBATE
JOURNALISTS on both sides of the Atlantic
began debating the coverage and speaking out. I
covered two conferences dealing with the issues
raised in this book. One in England was sponsored
by Reporting The World. Another, in New
York, was co-sponsored by The Guardian and
New York Magazine.