Media Missing in Action

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Fri, 8 Apr 2005 09:57:35 -0700 (PDT)

Media Missing in Action

 

 

 

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF & b=496137

 

Missing in Action

 

by Eric Alterman

April 7, 2005

 

The past several weeks have seen a near television blackout

of any story not related the passing of either Terri

Schiavo or Pope John Paul II. These stories are, of course,

important ones, but because of so much of the mainstream

media's inability to focus on more than one narrative at

once, important ought-to-be front pages stories are buried

inside newspapers and ignored entirely in the broadcast

media.

 

One of the stories that was shuffled off to near-obscurity

this past week in its own way cuts to the heart of the

right wing's contention that the " liberal media " has failed

to report good news coming out of Iraq.

 

Ignoring the fact that open warfare rarely provides many

happy stories, conservative critics have, for the past two

years, pointed to what they perceive as the lack of stories

covering reconstruction projects in Iraq. But as Reuters

recently reported, while the security situation is

currently improving, " red tape and graft could offset the

improved security situation, executives taking part in a

huge reconstruction expo [in Jordan] said…. Many Iraqi

businessmen say a major problem is that a sizeable amount

of money the U.S. has set aside for rebuilding is being

squandered by cronyism. This has been a factor in delaying

reconstruction even in relatively stable areas of Iraq. "

Given both the violence, and the corruption that is

plaguing reconstruction efforts, it's not hard to see why

" positive " stories about Iraq are not as prominent as the

war's die-hard supporters may wish.

 

In a story that should have made above-the-fold headlines

in our major dailies, last Saturday a group of insurgents

attacked Abu Ghraib prison, wounding 44 Americans and 13

inmates in the process. In what has been called the largest

and most sophisticated insurgent attack in Iraq since the

start of the war in March 2003, a group estimated at about

40 to 60 insurgents – al Qaeda's wing in Iraq later claimed

responsibility – battled American Marines for over an hour.

 

One might think that an attack of this magnitude with such

a high casualty rate – and on so symbolic a target as the

prison where first Saddam, and then the U.S. military

tortured innocent Iraqis – would generate some dramatic

reporting as well. Alas, one would be wrong. This story,

too, has been largely buried on the back pages of our major

dailies – it appeared on page A16 of the Washington Post

while the New York Times stuck the story on page A11, and

it was ignored entirely on cable and broadcast news.

 

To its editors' credit, the Post did finally run a front

page story on the attack on Tuesday, which finally gave all

of the particulars of the fight and the alleged involvement

of Abu Musab Zarqawi, while finally providing the correct

casualty figures (the initial reports in both the Post and

the Times were off by at least half). Meanwhile, Times

readers remain in the dark about the act's significance and

implications, save mentions of it as a footnote to other

Iraq stories.

 

In last place comes the LA Times, which ran a short piece

in its Sunday edition, and followed up on Tuesday with an

AP story that listed the number of insurgents wounded at

" about 50. " This, despite the fact that on Sunday the paper

said that only 40 to 60 insurgents were involved in the

attack in the first place. That's a pretty high casualty

rate, and one that hardly squares with other accounts which

failed to guess as to insurgent casualties, since no

prisoners were taken.

 

Another story that many probably didn't hear much about

last week was the " election " in Zimbabwe, where President

Robert Mugabe's ruling party secured a majority in that

country's parliamentary elections. This story, unlike the

Abu Ghraib attacks, did receive considerable coverage, at

least in the print media. Its quality, however, raises the

question of whether this is a blessing or a curse.

 

CNN ran with a highly neutral headline that read " Zimbabwe

ruling party wins majority. " Yet the details of the story

demonstrated that the election was less " won " than stolen.

 

While the piece intermittently makes it look like the

election was on the up and up, it also includes some

salient facts that should have dominated the coverage in

the first place, and which make the headline look

misleading. It notes, " Western countries and the

opposition have already declared the electoral process as

unfairly tilted in favor of ZANU-PF. Some observers have

said they found irregularities on election day – like the

electoral centers being based in people's homes, in chief's

homes rather than in neutral places like schools or fields.

But in terms of the counting itself, so far there have been

no complaints. "

 

CNN also cites " [a]n independent poll monitoring group " as

saying that about 25 percent of voters had been turned away

from polling stations in six of Zimbabwe's 10 provinces

either for lacking proper identity documents or being at

the wrong voting center. There were also reports of

residents in poor rural areas being told they could forfeit

food aid if they voted for the opposition. Despite this,

CNN tries to play the story both ways, painting the

election as both fair and corrupt at the same time.

 

In a similar fashion, the New York Times ran an even worse

story on Saturday, writing, " Mugabe's party routed its

opponents in parliamentary elections ... dashing forecasts

of an opposition surge.... Reports of irregularities were

scattered but persistent. "

 

Given the evidence of intimidation that CNN reported in

between writing as if the election were fair, the Times'

coverage looks absurd. Painting the election as a win for

Mugabe, the Times all but ignores the intimidation and

voting irregularities that human rights groups have

reported on. Alas, the meek and inaccurate reporting the

Times engaged in carried the day in most of the American

media – when the story was covered at all.

 

Of course the most significant absence in the media last

week was the lack of discussion of the report of the

Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United

States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. Imagine, we

need a $10 million, 14-month, 600-plus-page investigation

to tell us that the country was taken to war on the basis

of a nonexistent threat. I've written a critique of this

coverage for The Nation, and that column can be found here

beginning Thursday evening. Suffice it to say that the fact

that so much of the coverage of the report was drowned out

by the deaths of first Schiavo and then Pope John Paul II

may have proven a kind of divine intervention. Missing in

most of the coverage was a sense of how the fix on this

report was in from the start. As commission Co-Chair

Laurence Silberman explained, the report was barred from

investigating the only question that still matters: why the

United States went to war on the basis of clearly corrupt

evidence. " Our executive order did not direct us to deal

with the use of intelligence by policy makers, and all of

us were agreed that was not part of our inquiry, " Silberman

notes. And absent as well was any discussion of the role of

the media in selling to the nation – rather than

questioning – a policy based on deliberate deception.

 

Perhaps they'll get it right in the next war…

 

Eric Alterman is a senior fellow at the Center for American

Progress and the author of six books, including the

just-published When Presidents Lie: A History of Official

Deception and Its Consequences.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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