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Big Media
Mainstream Media Paves the Way to War
by Tony Brasunas
The cover of yesterday's San Francisco Examiner featured a large photograph. A soldier in a camouflage helmet, preparing to leave for war, was holding and kissed his adorable little son. The story, continued on page A5 under the headline, "U.S. troops prepare to set sail," described in minute detail the departure of the army and marines. Sailors were crying, mothers were worrying, and small girls were waving American flags. The other happenings mentioned in the article can be readily imagined by anyone who's seen a Hollywood war movie.
I was touched. I always am. Sending a Daddy off to war — perhaps never to return — is a huge and difficult decision to make at any time. I imagined myself there, a soldier, telling my wife she's pretty and that I love her, taking my son up into my arms, and hugging my daughter one last time as she waves a miniature flag.
The Biggest Story Was What Wasn't There
Nowhere in the article, however, nor anywhere in the whole newspaper, was there any discussion of why we're going to war. There was no column on why Americans are going off to risk their own lives and kill other people — at a time when no American or Iraqi lives are otherwise in danger. There were vague references to freedoms and to the so-called War on Terrorism (which, one presumes, aims to be more successful than the War on Drugs or the War on Poverty), but nowhere in the paper was any space given to that most hallowed duty of a democracy: debate about war. Where's the discussion about that huge and difficult decision? Are we all truly in agreement? Why, then, are millions taking to the streets?
Monarchies and dictatorships have always gone to war for petty reasons. An essential idea underpinning commentary on the reasons to "democratize" the planet is that democracies don't begin wars lightly.
Yes, this was just one issue of one newspaper. But I've had my eyes on the front pages for months. With the exception of rare pieces buried eight pages deep, and an occasional op-ed, the coverage is the same in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the mainstream news magazines. Instead of being encouraged to engage as citizens and participate in debate, we're told everyday that the decision to go to war is already a bipartisan consensus. Thus the media serves to foreclose, rather than enable, democratic debate.
Instead of constructive argument, we're guided by the newspapers and TV news to fear Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (which haven't turned up yet); we're told Saddam Hussein is linked to Al-Qaeda and 9-11 (with absolutely no evidence); and of course we're reminded again and again that the 9-11 massacre has left us less safe than before (as if fear should be reason enough to kill). Worst of all, we're led to believe that most Americans support attacking Iraq, even after a recent LA Times poll found that "72 percent of respondents, including 60 percent of Republicans, say Bush has not provided enough evidence to justify starting a war with Iraq."
Where is the front page story on the dedicated war protesters doing 24-hour vigils on overpasses in Oregon and Washington? They hold out signs to passing motorists and reportedly receive 20-to-1 support for their anti-war message. More critically, where is an examination of the government's rapidly shifting press announcements that seemingly try out a new reason for war every week? They'll tell us any reason but the real reason, it seems, and our faithful media lets them get away with it — often without even a single penetrating question.
The bottom line is that the mainstream media, by covering the rush to war without asking questions, is telling American citizens that war is coming, whether they like it or not. This message, at its core, engenders feelings of powerlessness and, ultimately, apathy. In a democracy, this is simply wrong. We should be told to think — not what to think. But here we are, told that war, as bad as it is, is coming. And our options are to shrug or to cheer.
The truth, on the other hand, is that it's never too late to save a life, as Illinois Gov. George Ryan just showed. So if the media is ignoring the groundswell of American dissent, it's time for citizens to begin to ignore the media. At least long enough to diversify the information they consume.
A More Balanced Diet
Although the mainstream media is paving the way to war, quality investigative journalism is still in fact going on — just in places most Americans don't have time to look. Can a few alternative articles balance a steady diet of cheerleading over soldier deployments and proclamations by Donald Rumsfeld? I suppose that depends on how nutritiously balanced one's diet needs to be. As the axiom goes, truth only has to whisper. Here's a menu of recent articles that have looked critically at what we're being told:
- In The Papers that Cried Wolf, Brian Whitaker takes a compelling look at the efforts of American newspapers to reduce popular opposition to war. (London Guardian)
- In A Lesson in US Propaganda, Mark Crispin Miller examines the media's role in propagating a government story about a baby formula factory in Iraq which we bombed during our first invasion of Iraq. Everyone from Colin Powell to Time declared the factory was a biological weapons factory. (Alternet)
- Buried in a mainstream newspaper is The Lies We're Told About Iraq, in which Victor Marshall recalls what the government told us about the first Iraq War, under the first Bush. Are similar lies being told to us today? (LA Times)
Why is it that we must dig to find debate on invading another country in peacetime? The real reasons for attacking Iraq are surely out there: controlling the global oil market, perhaps, or giving notice to the world that we don't just carry a big stick — we use it.
But the corporate media aren't interested in the real reasons. They are going along for the ride. When newspapers controlled themselves, the theory was simply that "war sells," and that newspapers thus selfishly promote war. That allegation, when true, remained but a small problem. But now that newspapers — and TV networks and movie studios and websites and radio stations — have been aggressively merged together into supra-national corporate conglomerates, their interests are much broader than sales at the newsstand. General Electric owns NBC and a large military jet engine industrial subsidiary. War affects the bottom line in more ways than one.
And then there's Viacom, who needs the Bush Administration to relax media cross-ownership rules so that it can buy more of the radio stations it covets.
So as you examine your media diet, consider sampling the articles above, as well as adding a helping of Common Dreams and a sprinkling of indymedia to your plate.
And join me in actively opposing the ending of the cross-ownership rules that govern the American media.
Tony Brasunas is publisher of Garlic & Grass.
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