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EMBEDDED: WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION
he lie?” The report leaned to a toned-down “all
presidents use selective interpretation”. A week
earlier, in contrast, the Economist in London put
a picture of Tony Blair on its cover with less
equivocation and beating around the bush. It
blared about Blair: “LIAR.” In testimony before a
Parliamentary Committee, Clare Short, one of
Blair’s Minister who resigned in protest, catalogued
deliberate distortion in her former Government’s
position. She called it – echoing the
title of this book – “Honorable Deception.”
In the United States, the focus has been on
intelligence failings and how the Administration
abused its spy agencies and concocted a threat
that was not there to stage a war that may not
have been needed. This focus has been misplaced
– and even so – not fully pursued. As Maureen
Dowd put it in late June: “They’re scrutinizing
who gathered the intelligence rather than
those who pushed to distort it.” For more detail
on this whole sordid tale, see the New Republic’s
take out, Deception and Democracy in its June
30th, 2003, issue. The magazine focuses on government
deception.
This book looks at how media outlets bought
this whole distorted story, and then brought it to
the rest of us.
This book was rushed out almost like a Samizdat
publication in the old Soviet Union; clearly, it
lacks the more considered perspective of the
many that will follow. There is more to dig up
and some of it may lead believers in a free press
to throw up,
That does not mean that many American journalists
are willing to concede they had been used
and had their trust abused. Few see a connection
between the June 2nd, 2003, FCC rule changes
that sailed through a body headed by the son of
260
the Secretary of State as a reward to media companies
for a job well done.
Many media people remain defensive, far
more willing to point their fingers at government
deception than their own. “I really want to read
a book by someone who wasn’t there,” was the
dismissive response I received when I offered to
send this book to a military correspondent on a
newspaper in Atlanta.
That may sound like fair point. But, the fact is
that many of those who were there had no idea
of the picture that most of were getting, or how it
was hyped, exaggerated and shorn of context.
The value of news has to be evaluated by its consumers,
not its originators.
Writes Chris Hedges who has covered many
wars for the New York Times:
“I doubt that the journalists filing the hollow
reports from Iraq, in which there are images but
rarely any content, are aware of how they are
being manipulated. They, like everyone else,
believe. But when they look back, they will find
that war is always about betrayal.”
He believes that journalists are used to disseminate
myths, justify war and boost the
morale of soldiers and civilians. “The lie in war
time is always the lie of omission,” he wrote in
The Nation.
Perhaps it’s too soon for many in the media to
recognize these truths. At the same time, I am
sure that much of what I have to say, and perhaps
even how I say it, is far too “unobjective” for
many in the media trenches to “get.” Most distrust
personality-inflected commentary from
independent journalists who deviate or dissent
from the straight and narrow, or even from the
more predictable left-right divide.
In the words of Lord Tennyson, “Theirs is not