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Media Are Too Soft on the White House
by
Norman Solomon
August
2, 2003
This
summer, many journalists seem to be in hot pursuit of the Bush administration.
But they have an enormous amount of ground to cover. After routinely lagging behind
and detouring around key information, major American news outlets are now
playing catch-up.
The
default position of U.S. media coverage gave the White House the benefit of
doubts. In stark contrast, the British press has been far more vigorous in
exposing deceptions about Iraq. Consider the work of two publicly subsidized
broadcasters: The BBC News has broken very important stories to boost public
knowledge of governmental duplicities; the same can hardly be said for NPR News
in the United States.
One
of the main problems with American reporting has been reflexive deference
toward pivotal administration players like Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and
Condoleezza Rice. Chronic overreliance on official sources worsened for a long
time after 9/11, with journalists failing to scrutinize contradictions, false
statements and leaps of illogic.
Powell's
watershed speech to the United Nations Security Council in February was so
effective at home because journalists swooned rather than drawing on basic
debunking information that was readily available at the time. To a great
extent, reporters on this side of the Atlantic provided stenography for top
U.S. officials, while editorial writers and pundits lavished praise.
The
most deferential coverage has been devoted to the president himself, with news
outlets treating countless potential firestorms as minor sparks or one-day
brush fires. Even now, George W. Bush is benefiting from presumptions of best
intentions and essential honesty - a present-day "Teflonization" of
the man in the Oval Office.
Midway
through July - even while Time's latest cover was asking "Untruth &
Consequences: How Flawed Was the Case for Going to War Against Saddam?" -
the president told reporters: "We gave him a chance to allow the
inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable
request, we decided to remove him from power." Bush's assertion about
Hussein and the inspectors - that he "wouldn't let them in" - wasn't
true. Some gingerly noted that the statement was false. But the media response
was mild. The president openly uttering significant falsehoods was no big deal.
Meanwhile,
reporting on the deaths of U.S. troops in Iraq has been understated. Editor
& Publisher online pointed out that while press accounts were saying 33
American soldiers had died between the start of May and July 17, "actually
the numbers are much worse - and rarely reported by the media." During that
period, according to official
military records, 85 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq. "This includes a staggering
number of non-combat deaths ... Nearly all of these people would still be alive
if they were back in the States."
In
a follow-up,
editor Greg Mitchell reported that his news analysis had caused "the
heaviest e-mail response of any article from E&P in the nearly four years I
have worked for the magazine." He added, "These weren't the usual
media junkies or political activists, but an apparent cross-section of
backgrounds and beliefs." Some of the letters were from relatives and
friends of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The strong reactions indicate that American
deaths are apt to be politically explosive for the 2004 presidential campaign.
Contradictions
have become more glaring at a time when the war's rising death toll already
includes thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of Americans. Many U.S. news
organizations are beginning to piece together a grim picture of deceit in
Washington and lethal consequences in Iraq. The combination foreshadows a
difficult media gauntlet for Bush.
Another
key political vulnerability that remains underreported is the economy. Its woes
persist in the context of a huge gap between the wealthy and most other
Americans - a gap that is set to widen still further due to the latest round of
White House tax changes and spending priorities. Ironically, this summer's
resurgence of Iraq-related coverage could partly overshadow dire economic news
in the coming months. It's deja vu, with a big difference.
Last
summer, the Bush team successfully moved the media focus from economic problems
to an uproar about launching a war on Iraq. That was a politically advantageous
shift that endured through Election Day. Now, with concerns about Iraq and the
economy again dominating front pages, it remains to be seen whether news
outlets will accelerate the search for truth or slam on the brakes.
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