Tuesday, July 31, 2007

I Think I Just Might Plotz

I made the mistake of catching a few minutes of ABC World News with Charles Gibson last night, and I am still pissed off. They did a brief story on what according to them was "the talk of Washington" yesterday: the optimistic "A War We Just Might Win" op-ed by Michael E. O'Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack in yesterday's New York Times. I'm here to tell ya that ABC's treatment of the story fit the mold described by ThinkProgress (speaking of CNN and Fox):

To her credit, Martha Raddatz did note in her brief chunk of the segment that the White House was "thrilled" with the op-ed and was sending it out "to the press corps, anyone who would read it today"; quoth Raddatz, "they are hoping that this buys them more time on the Hill for this surge to continue, but they've been hoping that for a long time." Wow! The Administration desperately needed some encouraging news on Iraq to stave off its Congressional critics, and just in the nick of time, along comes this op-ed—and in the we-all-know-it's-so-liberal New York Times, no less! The universe truly is a thing of wonder.

Let's review:

  1. Two "military analyst" supporters of the Iraq invasion spend eight days in Iraq and write an op-ed in the leading national newspaper saying that "the surge" is working better than we think;
  2. The White House, which has been facing mounting criticism about its war policy and has been desperate to convince Congress and the American people that the much-vaunted "surge" is working, eagerly pushes this miraculously timed op-ed on the media;
  3. The media obligingly pass along the op-ed's optimism—while obligingly calling these longtime war supporters "critics" and obligingly failing to inform their audience about the long record of pro-war punditry that maybe, just maybe, makes these guys less than trustworthy as judges of whether "the surge" is succeeding or not.
Whatever lingering doubts I have about Chomsky and Herman's "Propaganda Model" of the media die a little more every time I turn on my TV, I swear.

Addendum: Silly me, I hadn't even checked in with Glenn Greenwald when I let my simmering rage work itself out in the form of the post above. He went digging through O'Hanlon's and Pollack's old records of pro-war punditry, more recent records of pro-surge punditry, etc., and sums up his findings as pithily as anyone could: "It is more surprising—and more newsworthy—that the sun rose this morning than it is that O'Hanlon and Pollack have announced that the Surge is Succeeding." In-f*cking-deed. Or, even more pithily (emphasis his):

The Op-Ed is an exercise in rank deceit from the start. To lavish themselves with credibility -- as though they are war skeptics whom you can trust -- they identify themselves at the beginning "as two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration's miserable handling of Iraq." In reality, they were not only among the biggest cheerleaders for the war, but repeatedly praised the Pentagon's strategy in Iraq and continuously assured Americans things were going well. They are among the primary authors and principal deceivers responsible for this disaster.
A sane media in a sane democracy might actually stop listening to people like these—or at least would stop playing along with their shameless dog-and-pony shows. They might even apologize to their audiences for participating in such consent-manufacturing scams. But do any of us really expect any of these things to happen at this point?

Comments:
In another time and place, such a sudden push of disinformation would have led a responsible media to ask even more questions. But ours just rolls over to have its tummy rubbed.
 
I hadn't seen this yesterday, but last night on my local news I heard the same tag-line about "two former critics of the war who now say that things are improving in Iraq." God, I hate the fucking media in this country and what they've become.
 
well, atrios thinks chomsky is 'an idiot', so the propaganda model must be wrong.
 
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