The great Media Breakdown

[Guest guest]

http://www.motherjones.com/cgi-bin/print_article.pl?url=http://www.motherjones%2\

0.com/news/feature/2004/11/10_402.html

 

The Great Media Breakdown

The press admits it fell for the administration's line on weapons of mass

destruction. But the media's failure goes far beyond Iraq.

Gitlin

November/December 2004 Issue

 

All governments lie, the muckraker I.F. Stone used to say. They fudge and omit.

They bury and muffle inconvenient facts. They do this repeatedly, relentlessly,

shamelessly. That's hardly surprising. Why shouldn't they seek— as a Marine

Corps public affairs officer, Lt. Colonel Richard Long, told a conference on

journalism and the Iraq war—to " dominate the information environment " ?

 

But of late, the government has had plenty of help in its efforts at dominance.

To a disgraceful degree, the organs of news have been grinding out its tune.

Many are the reasons for deference. Reporters and editors are credulous,

fearful, and flatly bamboozled. Timid about getting out ahead of a public they

respect more when it is " conservative " (read: rightwardly radical) than when it

is liberal, they bend over backward to accommodate spin doctors. They grant

officialdom the benefit of the doubt. They fear risking independent judgment,

which they have defined as occupational hubris. They are terrified of missing

out on the perks of access. They fear that detailing the anatomy of official

distortion will turn off readers and viewers. Their proprietors, seeking favor

in high places, cool their critical engines. So the media yield to temptation

and morph into megaphones, and falsehoods too often and too loudly repeated take

on the ring of plausibility.