Glenn Greenwald has been running a series of posts about what should be a scandal in the USA, but isn’t. It should be a scandal because it reveals how the media’s whole coverage of the Iraq invasion and occupaton - not just the opinion pieces but the so-called news as well - has been heavily shaped and dominated by the US military as part of a calculated and sustained campaign of misinformation. It isn’t a scandal because the self-same media has largely ignored the story.
Greenwald’s latest post is here. Sample:
So the Pentagon would maintain a team of “military analysts” who reliably “carry their water” — yet who were presented as independent analysts by the television and cable networks. By feeding only those pro-Government sources key information and giving them access — even before responding to the press — only those handpicked analysts would be valuable to the networks, and that, in turn, would ensure that only pro-Government sources were heard from. Meanwhile, the “less reliably friendly” ones — frozen out by the Pentagon — would be “weeded out” by the networks. The pro-Government military analysts would do what they were told because the Pentagon was “their bread and butter.” These Pentagon-controlled analysts were used by the networks not only to comment on military matters — and to do so almost always unchallenged — but also even to shape and mold the networks’ coverage choices.
It really does highlight the foolishness of the pro-occupation cheerleaders who have spent the last five years excitedly citing ‘facts’ from the MSM to support their preferred interpretation of events.
BTW - does anybody know what happened to Paul McGeogh who used to report from the Middle East for the Sydney Morning Herald? He was one of the few reporters who actually lived in the place for extended periods and seemed to rely on sources he cultivated independently rather than handouts from the approved authorities. Refreshingly, he also engaged in extensive decription of what had happened free of the ‘he said/she said’ bullshit that usually passes for journalism these days. However, I haven’t seen his byline for a long time.
