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by
Norman Solomon
May
31, 2003
National
Public Radio deserves credit for finally airing a candid summary of how media
spin works at the top of the Executive Branch.
In
late May, listeners across the country heard: "Ari Fleischer, the White
House spokesperson, announced that he would be leaving his post sometime this
summer. When asked why, Mr. Fleischer denied he would be leaving his post. When
reminded that he had just said he was leaving his post, he denied that he had.
Then he shouted, 'Look over there! It's Dick Cheney eating lasagna!' and ducked
out of the room."
The
announcer was Peter Sagal, host of NPR's weekly news quiz show "Wait
Wait... Don't Tell Me," doing a brief promo shtick for the satirical
program -- illustrating, in the process, that when truth is spoken on large
networks it's apt to be in jest.
But
there's little meaningful jesting to be found in the mass-media world, where
deception is serious business. While news reporting from the White House
consists largely of stenographic treacle, such work appears to make shameless
correspondents swell with professional pride.
As
Fleischer has shown, masterful machinations from podiums win so much
reverential coverage that the exceptional hard-hitting news report gets lost in
the spin-control cycle. Overachievers in the political field of
"perception management" have combined tragedy and farce into an ongoing
single entity of governance.
Avoidable
tragedies -- whether in Baghdad or in unemployment lines back in the USA -- are
successfully marketed as unfortunate but acceptable necessities. Flag-lapel-waving
emptied suits on television push the envelopes of obsequious deference to huge
economic and political power structures.
At
the same time that eager apologists for a status quo of militarism and
corporate domination are appalling to people with more humanistic values, the
criticisms tend to be much less caustic than warranted. The pretensions and
pieties of national leaders merit an outpouring of derision and scorn.
Consider
the heads of state in Washington and London, now presiding over the oh-so-slow
installation of U.S.-selected Iraqi "leaders." After inflicting the
horrors of war on so many people, George W. Bush and Tony Blair feel compelled
to preen themselves as champions of freedom, even as the Bush administration
makes sure that only the slightest trappings of democracy will emerge in
U.S.-run Iraq.
In
the name of democracy, top U.S. officials will handpick the acceptable Iraqi
faces to plaster on a new regime of American creation. And the media war drums
are beating for Iran, perhaps the next beneficiary of U.S. concern.
With
some notable exceptions, journalists at major U.S. news outlets tell us that
President Bush has no need to come up with any of the "weapons of mass
destruction" that he swore up and down were in the possession of Saddam
Hussein at the start of the war. The self-fulfilling media verdict is that the
pre-war mendacity of the Bush administration doesn't matter politically in the
United States.
In
his March 17 speech, on the eve of launching the war, Bush declared:
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that
the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal
weapons ever devised." Where are the outcries from journalists calling the
Bush regime to account for such statements?
It's
hardly a sign of mental health that we don't keel over with derisive laughter
or apoplexy when hearing the latest to-be-received wisdom from media performers
such as Bush, Dan Rather, Bill O'Reilly and Thomas Friedman. The excessively
respectful treatment accorded them is part of the insidious overall pattern that
confers credibility on the incredible and bestows routine respect on flagrant
manipulators in very high places.
At
a time when schools, health care facilities and a wide range of other public
services are being drastically curtailed or even decimated in communities
across the country, the U.S. government has boosted its military spending to
well over a billion dollars per day. War industries are flourishing, while
egregious economic inequities grow even more extreme. But few high-profile journalists
have indicated much willingness to swim against the mainstream tide.
Norman Solomon is Executive
Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy (www.accuracy.org) and a
syndicated columnist. His latest book is Target Iraq: What the News Media
Didn’t Tell You (Context Books, 2003) with Reese Erlich. For an excerpt and
other information, go to: www.contextbooks.com/new.html#target.
Email: mediabeat@igc.org