UPDATED - ColdType

what really transpired in the briefing rooms and
embed posts, even if the scale of civilian casualties
is still unknown.
Michael Massing reports in The New York
Review of Books about those CENTCOM sessions
that spun the story of the day complete
with military video and lots of map pointing. He
charges that many of the colleagues he was
imprisoned with in that bunker in the Doha
desert knew nothing about the region, the culture
or the context. They were functioning as stenographers,
not critical journalists, he said.
Russell Smith says he was more peeved by
CNN, “The voice of CENTCOM” as he called it,
than Fox News, which one satirist describes as
“the Official News Channel of the Homeland.
(‘Ein Volk. Ein Reich. Ein Fuhrer. Ein News Channel.’)”
“CNN was more irritating than the gleefully
patriotic Fox News channel because CNN has a
pretense of objectivity,” Smith writes. “It pretends
to be run by journalists. And yet it dutifully
uses all the language chosen by people in charge
of ‘media relations’ at the Pentagon.”
Clearly there is much we still don’t know about
what happened on the ground in Iraq and the
details of why the media covered it the way it
did. Unfortunately, too, the growing chorus of
criticism is still too little, too late.
Mark the words of a media monitoring news
dissector: Observations like these and even
sharper criticisms to come will move soon from
the margins to the mainstream on their way to
becoming the conventional wisdom, “self-evident”
truth, as per the very late Dr. Schopenhauer.
In the end, with hindsight and reflection, all of
journalism will look back in shame. ●
WINNERS AND LOSERS
39
THE LINK BETWEEN WAR, THE
FCC AND OUR RIGHT TO KNOW
NEW YORK, MAY 01, 2003 – 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 even
many activists are 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 in order 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 Murdochowned
media assets like the Fox News Channel,
supportive newspapers, aggressive talk radio
hosts, conservative columnists and an arsenal of
on-air pundits adroitly polarizing opinion and
devaluing independent journalism.
They benefit from a media environment
shaped by a wave of media consolidation that has
led to a dramatic drop in the number of companies
controlling our media from 50 to between
five and seven – in just 10 years. Then there is the
merger of news biz and show biz. Entertainmentoriented
reality shows help depoliticize viewers
while sensation-driven cable news limits analytical
journalism and in-depth, issue-oriented cov-