News Media &The Madness Of Militarism

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Fri, 27 May 2005 09:42:42 -0700 (PDT)

News Media & " The Madness Of Militarism "

 

 

http://www.issuesandalibis.org/

 

News Media And " The Madness Of Militarism "

By Norman Solomon

 

 

Media activism has achieved a lot. But I don't believe there's

anything to be satisfied with -- considering the present-day realities

of corporate media and the warfare state.

 

War has become a constant of U.S. foreign policy, and media flackery

for the war-makers in Washington is routine -- boosting militarism

that tilts the country in more authoritarian directions. The dominant

news outlets provide an ongoing debate over how to fine-tune the

machinery of war. What we need is a debate over how to dismantle the

war machine.

 

When there are appreciable splits within or between the two major

political parties, the mainstream news coverage is apt to include some

divergent outlooks. But when elites in Washington close ranks for war,

the major media are more inclined to shut down real discourse.

 

Here's an example: In late February 2003, three weeks before the U.S.

invasion of Iraq began, management at MSNBC cancelled the nightly

" Donahue " program. A leaked in-house report said Phil Donahue's show

would present a " difficult public face for NBC in a time of war. " The

problem: " He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war,

anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's motives. " The danger

-- quickly averted by NBC -- was that the show could become " a home

for the liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors

are waving the flag at every opportunity. "

 

When the two parties close ranks, so do the big U.S. media. The

silence of politicians and media must not be our silence.

 

In the last months of his life, Martin Luther King Jr. talked about

the necessity of challenging the warfare state. In January 1968, he

said: " I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that

will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I

never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism... " In

March 1968, he said: " The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they

destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America. "

 

In 2005, we can say: " The bombs in Iraq explode at home. They destroy

the hopes and possibilities for a decent America. " Soldiers return

from their killing missions with terrible injuries to body and spirit.

Suffering festers due to the tremendous waste of resources spent on

war instead of helping to meet human needs. Meanwhile, corruption of

language embraces death.

 

Factual information that undermines the patterns of wartime deception

doesn't get much ink or airtime. But also, another kind of spiking

takes place in psychological and emotional realms.

 

It's essential that we confront the falsehoods repeatedly greasing the

path to war, as when New York Times front pages smoothed the way for

the invasion of Iraq with deceptions about supposed weapons of mass

destruction. At the same time, there is also the crucial need to throw

light on the human suffering that IS war. We need to do both --

exposing the lies and the horrific results. Illuminating just one or

the other is not enough.

 

In recent weeks, a lot of media attention has gone to the Bush

administration's flagrant efforts to manipulate public television. And

we're hearing about the need to defend PBS. That's understandable,

given the right-wing assault on the network. If you're starving, you

understandably would want some crumbs back. But that doesn't mean what

you really want is restoration of the crumbs. What we actually need,

and should demand, is genuine public broadcasting.

 

There was no golden era of PBS. The crown jewel of the network's news

programming -- with the most viewership and influence -- has long been

the nightly " News Hour With Jim Lehrer. " As with many other subjects,

the program's coverage of war has relied heavily on official U.S.

sources and perspectives in sync with them. The media watch group FAIR

(where I'm an associate) has documented that during one war after

another -- such as the Gulf War in 1991, the bombing of Yugoslavia in

1999 and the invasion of Iraq two years ago -- the News Hour's failure

to provide independent coverage has been empirical and deplorable.

Such failures are routine and longstanding for the show, as FAIR's

research makes clear.

 

To accept such a baseline of journalistic standards -- or, worse yet,

to tout it as an admirable legacy for public broadcasting -- is to

swallow too much and demand too little. A military-industrial-media

complex has grown huge while sitting on the windpipe of the First

Amendment. And a media siege is normalizing the murderous functions of

the warfare state. We are encouraged to see it as normality, not madness.

 

 

 

 

© 2005 Norman Solomon's next book, " War Made Easy: How Presidents

and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, " will be published in early

summer by Wiley. His columns and other writings can be found at Norman

Solomon.Com