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"If Iraq proved anything, it was that the BBC cannot afford
to mix patriotism and journalism. This is happening in the United
States and if it continues, will undermine the credibility of the
U.S. electronic news media… For the health of our democracy,
it's vital we don't follow the path of many American networks."
-- BBC Director General Greg Dyke [ link ]
Once upon a time, long long ago, Freedom of the
Press used to mean something in the United States. The decline
of this alien concept started years ago, but recently deteriorated
to an
extreme low during the time leading up to the invasion of Iraq.
Now, most media outlets in the United States are nothing more than
Propaganda Channels for the Bush Administration.
Consider the following:
- The U.S. Government staged a Hollywood-style dramatic rescue
of Jessica Lynch and provided edited footage as a press release,
which was obediently relayed to the world through the media.
According to widely reported accounts in the media at that time,
Lynch suffered gunshot wounds and was stabbed, interrogated and
roughed up in her hospital bed. But according to an investigation
by the BBC, Lynch's care was good. Her injuries did not include
stab or bullet wounds. She was given blood transfusions, some
of it donated to her by the
medical
staff.
She was assigned
the only "specialist bed" in the hospital and one of
only two nurses on the floor. There were no Iraqi soldiers or
police anywhere near the hospital when the U.S. soldiers arrived.
The Iraqi lawyer who helped the US military "find and rescue
POW Jessica Lynch" has been granted asylum in the US and
given a $500,000 book
deal. NBC is already planning a film.
More links: [ Cox
News ] [ The
Guardian ]
- In the weeks leading up to the invasion of Iraq, there was
a plethora of public warnings about “terrorists” plotting
to attack Americans, accompanied by glossy high-tech colour-coded
threat
alerts. Nearly every other week leading up to the invasion,
a different warning was issued. Since the war, not a single one
has been released.
On December 30 2002, for example, the FBI issued a report,
obediently picked up by the news media, that “several men
of Arab ancestry … crossed
illegally into the United States from Canada and may have connections
to others under watch in terrorism investigations”. However,
Mohammed Asghar, a Lahore, Pakistan, jeweler, revealed a week
later he is the man in a photograph included on an FBI watch
list under
the name Mustafa Khan Owasi, but he says he has never even
tried to get into the United States and has no link to terrorists.
[ more ]
- The Dossier from the United Kingdom that was purported
to contain the convincing evidence of Iraq’s Weapons of
Mass Destruction. This reported was published in the Western
Media as though it were the Gospil Truth. It was later discovered
to have been plagiarized word for word (complete with typos)
from
a Californian
postgraduate
student’s outdated thesis based on material that was a
decade old.
[ The
Times ]
- In January 2003, the media reported on a British government
report that Saddam Hussein had "sought significant quantities
of uranium from Africa" and also to American "intelligence
sources . . . that he [Hussein] has attempted to purchase high-strength
aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." However,
the alleged purchase of uranium proved was not true, and the
aluminum tubing turned out, according to the U.N. inspectors,
to be unrelated
to any nuclear weapons program. In other words, the evidence
for a reconstituted nuclear weapons program was more imagined
than
real.
[ Washington
Post ]
Also, some parts of the media may be getting caught up on the
patriotic bandwagon by taking sides in the news story, thereby
becoming a part of the story. Some of this is through asking
leading questions:
Recently on CNN, the newscasters posed the question for an email
response from the public “Are you ready to forgive the
Dixie Chicks?”
This presupposes that they did something wrong by criticizing
their president in a public forum. A more appropriate question
could have been “Do you think the Dixie Chicks did something
wrong by saying they were embarrassed to be from the same state
as George W. Bush.”
This issue will be explored much further in the next couple of
months. Please check back to read an updated version of this page.
Meanwhile, you
can voice
your opinion on which U.S. television network best
serves the Bush Administration.
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