ThinkVox

So should we be surprised?  Given this administration’s out-and-out assault on our free press, not at all.  What’s surprising is that it took this long to figure it out.  The New York Times exposes the ugly truth that Pentagon has for years been spinning out pure pro-war propaganda under the guise of news analysis and commentary by “military analysts.”  Add this to another in the long list of Orwellian tactics we’ve been subjected to over the last 8 years.

I wish I could lay all of the blame on this on DoD or the Bushies, but sadly, the mainstream media bears a large burden of blame in this as well.  Maybe you can excuse them for falling prey to this ruse in the early pre-invasion and early Iraq war years of 2002 to 2003.  We were all still a bit stunned from 9/11 and perhaps the true extent to which this administration would mendaciously mislead us into war was perhaps unknown and unforeseen.  In the feverish rush to war many news bureaus simply took the easy way out and simply followed along.  As inexcusable as this may have been, given the context and times, it may have at least been understandable. 

But this has continued non-stop for years now, and still goes on today.  Did the TV news networks just drop the ball, or were they just lazy in not conducting sufficient investigations into all of the former military brass “experts” it had hired over the years to appear on their broadcasts?   Actually, they treated these analysts differently, not holding them to the same ethical standards as other news employees.  As such, they failed the public dreadfully and should be ashamed for the role they’ve played in the commencement and promotion of this tragic fiasco we call the War in Iraq.

If this doesn’t get you to stop watching the infotainment swill that passes for TV news these days I don’t know what will.   The corporate media is the last place you should look to for news.   It was bad enough when the main critique of TV news was just that they were lightweights when it came to journalism, seldom covering stories in meaningful detail or providing anything resembling in depth objective analysis.  Now, we see that the TV press has so abandoned their moral obligations of veracity and  of speaking truth to power, that they’re basically useless. 

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 9:58 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.