Seeing No evil: the media forges its own reality on Iraq
“Militants threaten to behead hostages,” reads the Sunday, September 19, 2004 issue of the Star-Ledger, a major NJ newspaper. This was right after the previous day’s headline about “militants” blowing up a car-bomb.
To most thinking Americans, something seems amiss about this headline -- a headline cast in the same vein as the media's continuous misquoting of the September 11 Commission which has the Commission saying there was no terrorist connection in Iraq, when in fact there was.
While most reporting has yet to sink to the level of an infamous article that earlier in the year described terrorists as “grenade-throwing protesters” [as if throwing a grenade was covered by free speech protections], the news coming to America from the war in Iraq is an increasingly bizarre mixture of fiction and wishful thinking. This is especially so in the sense of the headlines.
To many Americans, headlines are the newspaper. A paper’s headlines may catch his eye – or not. They may make him want to read the article – or not. To a newspaper, headlines can sell – or sink – the business of reporting what goes on. In fact, writing good headlines is not easy. But surely it is not in a newspaper’s best interest to write bad headlines; headlines which at best, cast doubt on the accuracy of the article to follow, or at worst, make the newspaper about as credible as the Weekly World News’ story of a half man, half bat creature living in upstate New York.
Yet, as reasonable as it would be to expect the newspapers to be accurate in their headlines, remarkable liberties are being taken. It is not just the headlines, either; the articles are just as susceptible to reality creep. The New York Times ran a series of articles in August on their front page, reporting on the campaign ads by a group of Swift Boat veterans who questioned John Kerry’s version of his war conduct. At the time the Times ran their first article, about half of what the group said was known fact. Nevertheless, the Times began the series of article by referring to “mostly unsubstantiated” claims by the group. By the time the middle of the week arrived, Kerry had corrected his decades-old insistence that he had been secretly deployed to Cambodia on Christmas of 1968, which he had vehemently maintained. Now, he says, he was somewhere, nearby. Not “in” Cambodia, where he claims he allegedly witnessed U.S. troops committing war crimes which he obviously could not have witnessed if he was not there! Nevertheless, as one article followed another, the New York Times take on the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth grew more and more distant from the facts. Soon the Times dropped the “mostly” and began saying that all the charges made by the group were completely unfounded. This was after Kerry himself admitted otherwise.
The reporting is as far from reality as the headlines. When a mostly true series of accusations are described as “mostly unsubstantiated” and then dismissed as complete lies, the print media becomes about as much a respected pillar of credibility as Dan Rather.
The problem is that, unlike Dan Rather, people can’t change the channel on the newspapers or turn them off. They sit in their stands and they sell. And the well-known names, like the New York Times, or the local giants, like The Ledger, will continue to sell, simply because they are well known. The problem is that for the millions of citizens who get their “news” from the Star-Ledger or the New York Times, the world seems a twisted fantasy land – where true accusations are false and there are no terrorists in Iraq, even though said terrorists are busily cutting off heads, just because people call them by another name. The problem with the media is that they have gotten themselves into the business of seeing no evil, hearing no evil, and therefore, speaking no evil. The evil they choose to avoid is telling in and of itself. True to their leftist ideals of multiculturalism, they blame the U.S. for trying to introduce oppressed Iraqis to freedom and remove a threatening regime. True to these same ideals, they refuse to admit the truth about the candidate who is most likely to forward them on the political playing field – namely, John Kerry.
Both the news coverage out of Iraq, and the treatment of the Swift Boat Veterans, shows an alarming side of the media, and a growing trend. That trend reached critical mass this month with the advent of an historic event. The media crossed the line. It went from omitting the truth, to actively broadcasting lies.
The difference may not seem too great to honest citizens, who frown upon either. However, when CBS’s “60 Minutes” ran a story critical of Bush – basing its criticism on forged documents – it triggered a massive response. Centrist and right-leaning newspapers openly mocked Dan Rather’s attempt to pass the documents off as real, even though they were clearly written on Microsoft Word, which did not exist in the early years of the 1970’s. Left-wing newspapers tried to defend Rather, but it was a halfhearted defense, and some left-leaning papers, such as USA Today, which had ran stories based on the forged memos, actually began calling for an investigation into the forgeries to try and save their credibility.
Yet, Dan Rather remains insistent that the accusations the memos talked about are real, even if the memos are forged.... just the Star-Ledger will tell you there are no terrorists in Iraq – only militants. Yes, Rather has admitted the memos aren't real -- but after a week of trying to claim they were and denouncing those who said otherwise as paid political operatives. While CBS and Rather's admission was a shock, don't think it means they admit any wrongdoing. Far from it. Rather still claims the gist of the story was true, even if the "evidence" was a bad forgery. And CBS' actions are being whitewashed by their fellow media; the current line now being spouted by columnists, analysts, and television talking heads, is that CBS' only mistake was rushing to get a story out "in a timely manner". They kindly omit the fact that there were questions about the "evidence" before they even ran the story. They knew there were questions, but rather than investigate, they ran with it anyway... because they wanted the memos to be true. That is what's so sad. It isn't about trying to get out a story before the competition or anything else like that, which even remotely fits the function of media. It isn't about Dan Rather trying to scoop the competition. It is about Dan Rather trying to get John Kerry elected. That's the thing about this story. Even in their "apology", CBS-Rather are incapable of being honest. Nor are their defenders in the established media.
In their world, America is the villain of the world stage, cutting taxes is wrong, raising them is good, and Iraq was a nice happy place until we came in and started rudely trying to introduce people to the Western idea of Freedom. In their world, the course taken by America under Bush is worse. In their haste to reclaim the Clinton years, the media is pushing John Kerry, although even if it was Howard Dean they'd probably still support him. Remember the line "Anybody but Bush"?
The media has created its own version of the world, and is now attempting to export it into the mind of every man, woman, and child in America. The problem is that this ultimate forgery, the forgery of reality itself, does not take into account precisely that: The mind. It is based upon the wishes and whims of the media elite, guided by their false premises and threadbare ideology. They wish there were no terrorists in Iraq because they want the U.S. to be seen as waging an unjust war. They wish the Bush memos were true, and the Swift Boat Veterans’ claim were lies. So they pretend that all these things are so: that if they call the truth a lie, or say false documents real, or figure that terrorists will disappear if we just call them something else.
Americans laughed at "Baghdad Bob", Iraq's "information minister", when he was spoofed on late-night comedy shows as saying "There are no Americans in Baghdad!" as a column of U.S. infantry rolled past just behind him. What we are now faced with is the reality that we have our own Baghdad Bobs in the mainstream media -- and we support them every time we tune into "60 Minutes" or buy a copy of the New York Times. With that support, they are forging their own version of reality -- and trying to hoist it on the entire nation. The problem with this is that it doesn’t take into account the very minds the media wishes to mislead. The media may be going by the old adage “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” But they forgot one other sense: Smell no evil. The stench emanating from the fourth estate would wake a dead horse.
The media forgot another old adage, too: If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck.
Even if you call it a “militant”.
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