Bang The Table.
By Michael Reynolds | Related entries in The World, WarThe ancient wisdom of lawyers: When the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When the law is on your side, argue the law. When you have neither, bang the table.
The political version? When the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When they aren’t, blame the media.
The push is on to blame the media for Iraq.
Was it the media that muzzled the Army Chief of Staff when he said that occupation would require several hundred thousand troops? No.
Was it the media that wanted to cut US forces drastically within days of reaching Baghdad? No.
Was it the media that announced mission accomplished three years ago? No.
Was it the media that failed to guard massive weapons caches in Iraq? No.
Was it the media that failed to close the borders with Iran and Syria? No.
Was it the media that laughed at looters who ended up costing Iraq billions of dollars and setting reconstruction efforts back to a fatal degree? No.
Was it the media that dismissed the insurgency as a handful of dead-enders? No.
Was it the media predicting the imminent defeat of those dead-enders again and again and again? No.
Was it the media that ignored the US Army’s own hard-won knowledge of how to fight a guerilla war? No.
Was it the media that ensured the burden would fall almost entirely on US forces? No.
Was it the media that failed to establish a strong chain of command at Abu Ghraib? No.
Was it the media that refused to up-armor Humvees or rush armored vehicles to Iraq? No.
Was it the media that told us we had a viable Iraqi military force? And then that we didn’t. And then that we did. And then not so much. And then maybe. No.
Was it the media that caused Iraqi soldiers to melt away in combat? No.
Was it the media that failed to protect Iraqi oil production? No.
Was it the media that failed to turn the lights back on in much of Iraq? No.
No. Here’s what the media did that so infuriates the media-bashers: they reported the above. And they failed to report on Marines handing out lollipops. The media, having swallowed uncritically the WMD claims, having been lied to again and again and again, by L. Paul Bremer and Donald Rumsfeld and by gutless four stars who care more about their careers than they care about their men, became rather skeptical of further claims that everything was coming along nicely.
Is the media blameless? God no. They are often lazy. They have a pack mentality. They have a hard time, sometimes, remembering who they’re rooting for. Are they the reason Iraq doesn’t have a functioning government, including no prime minister, months after the election? No. Did the media cause Iraqi voters to reject every pro-American moderate outside of Kurdistan? No.
Media bashers point to two historical parallels: World War 2 and Vietnam. Was the media coverage in WW2 far less critical than it is today? Yes. Was there a 24 hour news cycle in 1944? No. Live TV coverage? No. Did everyone with a computer have access to an endless array of newspapers from all over the world? No. There was a monopoly of news, effectively a handful of newspaper and wire service reporters. We keep hearing, when it suits, that the Mainstream Media has lost influence. And now, when it suits, we hear that the MSM is all-powerful, capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Fox News, the nation’s highest-rated cable news channel by far, and The Wall Street Journal, the nation’s most widely circulated newspaper, are famously pro-war. The talk radio airwaves are a wholly-owned subsidiary of the White House. This White House is well-respected for its ability to communicate, and the president retains the bully pulpit. And there are thousands of high-rated websites that support this war uncritically, echoing every administration claim. And there are military bloggers. And yet, despite all this, it seems the CBS Evening News, with an audience composed entirely of people in nursing homes, and low-rated CNN, and the New York Times, (whose Judy Miller actively participated in promoting this war,) have, all by themselves, hoodwinked a public which just a year ago voted for Mr. Bush.
Vietnam Syndrome is the name of the mental disorder we’re seeing at work here. Just as the Left drew absurd pacifist, hair-shirt, anti-American conclusions from that war, so the Right drew its own wacky conclusions. Chief among these is that the media lost Vietnam. Almost nine years of war, the longest war in American history, and it’s the media’s fault for somehow . . . what? Foreshortening it? Cutting it off prematurely? Because nine years and 55,000 dead in a cause we didn’t really care enough to win wasn’t quite enough?
The media raged during the War of 1812, which we fought to a draw against the superpower of its time, Britain. The media was divided along partisan lines during the Mexican-American War, which we won handily. The media howled during the Civil War, which we won. Mr. Lincoln was called a baboon. General Grant wascalled a butcher, an incompetent drunk. By northern papers. The media does not win or lose wars. Wars are won or lost by strategy and tactics, by the balance of forces, and by the national will.
Ahah! the media bashers will say: national will, exactly. And that is what the media is sapping here.
Sorry, no. In Vietnam, national will was lost before the media had found Vietnam on the map. We lost in Vietnam before we ever committed a man to battle. We lost when we took invasion of the north off the table. And we lost when we refused the sorts of savage, determined actions that won World War 2. The government in North Vietnam had decades of experiencee in fighting the Japanese and the French. They had a direct pipeline to China and the USSR, both of which loved nothing better than supplying them with weapons to kill Americans. They had refuges in Laos and Cambodia. If we weren’t going to invade, and we weren’t going to start burning entire cities full of civilians down, we were going to lose. The failure of will preceded the actual war.
We didn’t win World War 2 because reporters were more patriotic. We won World War 2 because we produced more tanks, planes and ships. And because we backed Joseph Stalin, a man only marginally preferable to Adolph Hitler, whose forces killed the overwhelming majority of Germans who died in that war. And we won by strategy, by making the intellectual leap that allowed us to island hop around Japanese strong points. And we won because we delayed entry into the war and let others, including our British friends, do most of the killing. And we won because Albert Einstein moved to Princeton in 1937. And because we were ruthless and brutal and determined.
We weren’t rutless and brutal and determined in Vietnam. We were even less so in Iraq. We weren’t smart, and we didn’t play to our strengths, and we weren’t determined to pay any price, bear any burden, commit any horror. If Vietnam was lost before we ever put a man on a jungle path, the key moment for Iraq was when Rumsfeld et al dismissed the considered judgment of generals Shinseki and Colin Powell. We opted to do this war on the cheap, with one hand tied behind our back, making a half-assed, confused effort, and that’s why we are where we are today.
Add a thousand stories of soldiers helping Iraqi orphans, and we’d still be right where we are today.
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March 23rd, 2006 at 11:01 am
Well done again, Michael. Great post.
While I am not a big fan of the MSM, I do believe you are correct to point out that no matter what “they” are saying and doing, it doesn’t cause good or bad decisions or acts to be conducted in Iraq. Perhaps one or both or all sides of this “war” can benefit or suffer, from time to time, because of perceptions caused by the media, but that is truely a peripheral force.
March 23rd, 2006 at 11:36 am
Imagine if the headline after D-Day was “3000 americans slaughtered in first day of fighting” and the reporters failed to mention that the marines actually took the beach that day. Imagine if the focus was entirely shifted to how the 82nd airborne division failed to soften up the machine-gun emplacements the night before, or that poor intelligence work failed to decieve the Germans into believing the the attack would not occur at Normandy.
Alll this “grim milestone” and “exit strategy” talk doesnt have any relevance to the actual campaign on the ground, but if progress is being made and the public is not informed about it, americans may become weary and vote for more politicians like Murtha, and the U.S. forces will retreat before the job is done. Who’s fault is that? Who cares. Its just the way it is.
From the Washington Post,
I guess the Iraq war veterans need to read more of the San Fransisco Chronicle to find out how the war is really going.
March 23rd, 2006 at 12:45 pm
I see the push is on to pretend the media has nothing to do with perceptions of victory and defeat.
Sorry, repeating a list of discredited DNC talking points over and over won’t change the facts. No one announced “mission accmplished”; what Bush actually said was “tough work lies ahead.” The rest of your list is either similarly disingenuous or the kind of idiotic second-guessing that just proves my point.
In Vietnam, American air power plus the ARVN was sufficient to hold the country. 1972 proved that. in 1975, we abandoned them, largely because the media claimed Tet was a defeat and the war was unwinnable; the commander of N Viet forces says himself he could not have prevailed without their help.
You can blindly ignore the lessons of history, but Al Qaeda isn’t.
March 23rd, 2006 at 12:47 pm
We didn’t win World War 2 because reporters were more patriotic. We won World War 2 because we produced more tanks, planes and ships.
Oh really? And if the media had convinced Americans the war was unwinnable and we’d come back home after Okinawa and the Battle of the Bulge, those tanks and planes would have flown and driven themselves?
Sheesh.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:07 pm
Oh, and someone remind me what our major goals were in Iraq? I seem to recall the big ones were
1) Remove Saddam
2) Establish democracy
I forget, how are those going? Is Saddam still in charge? Any elections held in Iraq yet? How about voter turnout?
Do rebels still hold Fallujah? Did we lose tens of thousands in urban combat? Have their been mass starvations, mass water shortages, massive disease outbreaks? Historically, what has been the case with these things in other wars?
It’s not about Marines handing out lollipops (truly, Michael, you are the king of beating down strawmen of your own making), it’s about what constitutes victory, what constitutes defeat, and whether the evil people blowing up Iraqis are held responsible for doing so or whether the blame is assigned to the people trying to stop them.
As I’ve pointed out, the way the war is being reported, no matter whether the enemy wins or loses an engagement, the action is reported as a failure to “provide security.”
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:12 pm
I just wonder why everyone is discussing the media as if it’s some monolithic force with one voice and one objective. The media is made up of thousands and thousands of sources, all with their own views and biases.
Plus, comparing media coverage of WWII to media coverage of Iraq is like comparing an afternoon rain shower to a hurricane. The coverage of Iraq is so much broader and so much more widespread and so much more immediate that it’s entirely incomparable to WWII. Or even Vietnam, really.
Sure, SOME media sources have gone out of their way to portray the war in wrongfully negative ways (the NYT comes to mind). But many others have just portrayed it for what it is, a complicated mess. And some have gone out of their way to portray it in constantly upbeat terms. There are many voices in the media and we all tend to gravitate to those we prefer to hear. Which is why I find it hard to accept that the media is to blame for the decreasing support for this war. Have that many people turned off Fox News and picked up the New York Times? Or is it something else?
“The media” is a construct that doesn’t exist in the way people are discussing here. And while it has power, that power is fragmented by hte very fact that so many voices make up what we call the media.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:12 pm
Alleged “table-banger” Hitchens on the media:
http://www.radioblogger.com/#001487
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:19 pm
Today in Baghdad, a special operation team consisting of American and British soldiers freed some so-called peace activists who had been held hostages for soe months. CNN quoted reaction from which of the following:
a. The President and Prime Mininster praising the operation
b. Members of the rescue team praising the operation
c. A former Guantanamo detainee and a British terror suspect awaiting trial in Britain – neither of which had ever met the hostages.
It’s not a hard quiz, just a very bizzare one.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:42 pm
“No one announced “mission accmplished”"
Maybe he didn’t say it directly but can anyone honestly say they didn’t believe he was trying to send that message?
http://www.greg.org/images/sforza_mission_accomplished.jpg
FWIW, my local media does a lot of stories on what is going right in Iraq. Yes, the bad things get air time also but that’s part of complete coverage. Based on my conversations with several friends who served in Iraq, it seems like the picture the local media has painted very much matches what they tell me is actually going on over there. It’s not all bad but there is plenty of bad to go along with the good.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Fine. However, the sources often share the same tone an bias. You got Fox news and the Wall Street Journal and afternoon radio talk shows, but thats about it on that side.
The vast bulk of readership and viewership is exposed to the particular bias you have mentioned with the New York Times. Every network news channel, 4 out of 5 cable news channels, the largest circulating newspapers from every major city, NPR and public televison, Every major acedemic institution, even Hollywood movies…ect share a similar, left-leaning, “progessive” interpetation of current events (and history for that matter). Its not SOME, but MOST and that is the key distinction here.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:02 pm
I suppose perception depends upon what one looks at and how one interpets. One poster here quotes the Wapo on issues that some soldiers have with coverage, but is not aware that the Wapo is part of the media, that this is also part of the coverage.
One poster decries (among other things) the fact there were not massive civilian casualties and refugee problems during the invasion, but those estimates were based on predictions of WMD. In fact that is one area we successful prepared for.
The media did not stress the warnings from General Zinni and at least half a dozen official and semi offical groups including the Army War College and Rand that successfuly spotted many problems that people like Rumsfled denied. And the president did say major combat operastions were over on May 1 2003. In fact American casualties gradually increased and have been steady for 2 years.
Electricity recently reached a 3 year low. Oil production is substantially reduced. The last reports from the World Bank showed the economy flattening. It is unsafe to travel many places.
Let me give an analogy based on facts.
Facts: According to Steven Vincent (probably killed by Shiite militias) there were several hundred murders a month in Basra. Similar if smaller atrocities occur in much of the south. Bahdad has huge piles of bodies since the invasion much of it from crime, then from insurgents terorizing and in the last year from death squads. A conservative estimate puts murders at several thousand a month, less than in most months under Saddam. The beatliness of the insurgents is also well known, but many Sunnis most probaly killed by the Shiite militias are tortured, power drills seem popular.
So now we have deaths equivalent to many bad months under Saddam. With much less electricty, in a country where the streets are much less safe, where in many places women must be vieled. More dead and in many cases equally brutally to many periods in the eighties. Much worse social conditions.
So what the right is saying (and indeed they did this, denying the gassing of Kurds until the Gulf war) is that in the eighties we should not have criticcized the Saddam regime because “good things were happening” and these should be the things reported.
So the press should not mention concerns about civil war because this is uncomfortable news. Indeed the argument is that the press has invented the worry. Which isn’t true, but since the issue is not success in Iraq but the presidents rating it must be ignored. The right is guided by the motto “what would saddam or Stalin do?’
Because of this problems were not addressed, they escalated. The documentation of catastrophic incompetence and failure of judgement is being relentlessly built in books like “Assasins Gate” and “Cobra II.” But it doesn’t matter to the right because of “faith based reality.” Like the denizens of 1984 they think the portrayal of reality is faith based reality.
I ask them to prove this “great success.” Go to Baghdad and wander the steets unguarded. Venture into the country, places which after “Mission accomplished” were safe. Then they can talk. Otherwise they are like idiots complaing that gang plagued projects are a great success because they have running water (which much of Iraq lacks) and half the roofs don’t leak.
The right wants to shoot the messenger. They literally claim the press is guilty of treason. Because they base their actions on what would Saddam do. Thus they pretend looting was combined to one vase shown over and over, not the entiire government infrastructuire, the factories and much private property, that prisoner abuse was a one night frat party, that all is well. They lie. They have done all they can do deny the mechanisms of reform which involves ruthless examination of flaws, they deny the possibility of civil war, but there fallback is “the media caused it” and then shamelessly “civil war is good for Iraq, that’s why we invaded.”
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:18 pm
More “table-banging,” this time by Mark Steyn. Oh, and 25 million crazy Iraqis who apparently didn’t get memo about how horrible Iraq is.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:31 pm
Go to Baghdad and wander the steets unguarded.
Go to LA and wander the steets unguarded. See if a Crip or Blood gets you first.
A conservative estimate puts murders at several thousand a month, less than in most months under Saddam.
Yeah, but that’s a HUGE qualifier. Democide always happens in spurts. Not that many Jews died in “most months” under Hitler… until they started being carted off to gas chambers. Then they had some pretty bad months.
Similarly, the hundreds of thousands of Shia in mass graves and the Kurds who were gassed mostly got killed in a short time.
When you look at the overall averages, it’s quite clear the rate of death has been lower since the invasion, with the exception of the first few weeks of the war.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:32 pm
Venture into the country, places which after “Mission accomplished� were safe.
Name me one place it was safe to criticize Saddam Hussein.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:58 pm
“No one announced “mission accmplished”
Uhhhh, yes they did TallDave. On a big banner above Bush’s head on a boat – sound at all familiar? If not, here is a picture of it.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/10/28/mission.accomplished/
It’s really annoying when people say things that are blatantly false. It makes me question that person’s credibility in the future.
Also, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop using the term “strawman.” Some people on this blog use it so often that I’m beginning to wonder if any of you actually know what it means.
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/strawman.html
TallDave: I think all your strawmen references ARE strawmen.
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:29 pm
Alan said:There are many voices in the media and we all tend to gravitate to those we prefer to hear.
I think we all tend to gravitate to those we prefer to bash!
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:30 pm
Northern Iraq.
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:39 pm
“I think we all tend to gravitate to those we prefer to bash!”
Yeah, except for approximately 9/11/01 to around mid-2003. You couldn’t hardly find one news story skeptical of going to war. I remember that at the time I was almost appalled by the amount of cheerleading and almost sick enthusiasm about it. Of course, I have no proof that I felt that way, and I guess at the time we “prefer[red] to bash” the Middle East.
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:46 pm
You know, there is one instance where I expect and demand the media to be predominantly negative about a certain leader and his policies:
When said leader has predominantly screwed up.
If Bush really was a strong, credible and successful leader, he wouldn’t need to worry about media bias. He’d be creating his own media image regardless of whether Dan Rather hates him. But he isn’t. His administration is a sinking ship and it shouldn’t suprise anybody that most people, including much of the media, are running for the lifeboats.
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:54 pm
Justin,
Northern Iraq was safe because of American air cover. The Kurds were allowed to grow a nascent democracy because they were not subject to the daily depravities of Saddam.
As to the whole “Mission Accomplished” thing: Yeah, it’s apparent that Bush played up the end of the invasion. However, the sign that is so famously quoted was put up by the ship’s crew, because, on return from theater, they had actually accomplished their mission. It was their sign, not the White House’s.
March 23rd, 2006 at 4:06 pm
A few responses, then a “look at it this way.”
After Lincoln shut down Northern opposition newspapers and arrested their editors and pro-Republican mobs trashed their offices. Sure you want to use that example?
In terms of something like Iraq coverage, the monolith is true. There are thousands of newspapers and TV stations in America, so you get the feeling there’s a veritable cacophany of news opinion. But there are only a hundred or so news correspondents working full-time covering Iraq for the English language media. And an even fewer number of news conduits serving up that news to the pack of papers and stations — AP, Reuters, NYT, the usual suspects. Perhaps a dozen at most. There’s a bottleneck.
Most of the reporters spend more time with each other than with any source they have. The editors who shape their stories fraternize with other editors. The tendency for groupthink and herd mentality happens at this point. Then, once the stories get distributed across the nation, to your local paper, they already have their tone and angle and often even their headlines — look how often the term “grim milestone” appeard on the day of the 2,000th U.S. casualty.
Now the “look at it this way.”
Yes, of course, the news is by its nature what is dramatic and destructive, what is catastrophic. It breaks, it doesn’t blossom. But the best newsmen always also knew how to find and write other kinds of stories. Not every movie made is “The Fast and the Furious.”
But even if every violent story told in Iraq is completely valid as a news story, the total of all these small stories is not one valid big story. Especially when it is reportage from a place most readers/viewers never see firsthand.
Look, I live in a small city, multi-ethnic, amid a lily-white country. It’s about the nicest, most livable places I’ve ever lived. But if I only saw it through the eyes of my newspaper, or of the local TV station, I’d think it was hell on earth. “City man” is headline shorthand for “black criminal.” Whenever the city is in the news, somethings burning down or cops are picking up shell casings from the street. The only young black males in the newspaper are in mug shots (on page A1) or high school basketball players (on page C1).
Certainly each of these stories is true. But the sum of them is not the place where I live, or its destiny or its spirit or its potential. A story on a neighborhood group with 400 members will be buried in C14. A story about one Puerto Rican who kills his girlfriend will be on A1. Is that journalistically appropriate? Of course it is. And as a result, the people who live out in the county are utterly terrified of the city. They won’t even set foot here by day, much less after dark. They joke about it constantly: “Oh, if you go there you’ll be killed for sure.” They structure their lives so that they can get everything they need without setting foot in the city.
And does this mentality change reality? Of course it does. Employers move to suburban locations, the better to keep their employees (unemployment here is under 4.5%). Downtown theaters close. Downtown groceries close. Real estate prices sink. The public schools deteriorate. Part of all that is a result of people’s perceptions.
To judge whether Iraq is making some progress, or is worth the effort we’re putting into ir — or to judge whether our leaders are making competent decisions or not — we need to know about more than the car bombings. Maybe it’s good news, maybe it’s not. But it needs to get beyond the basic police blotter story.
March 23rd, 2006 at 4:11 pm
Was it the media that reported that in every single war America has fought, the soldiers didn’t discover exactly what they needed until they got to the battlefield and found out what they were up against? And that military supply is an enormous bureaucracy that takes time to respond? And that in the meantime the soldiers improvise, which is part of their genius and skill?
Good lord, Michael, don’t you read Bill Mauldin cartoons?
And if the media goes apoplexic over Humvee armor, without providing a scintilla of context, is it misleading the public? If it goes to 80-point Futura headlines over 2,000 killed in two years, without noting anywhere, even at the end of the jump, how long it took to reach 2,000 killed in previous wars, is it doing its best by the American people?
March 23rd, 2006 at 4:29 pm
Daniel:
The notion that anyone put a sign up behind Mr. Bush without the approval of his advance team is laughable. Nothing happens around any modern POTUS that hasn’t been cleared with staff and Secret Service.
TallDave:
I love Hitch and I love Steyn, but of course they are “table bangers.” They were both strong advocates for the war (as I was) who have been betrayed by incompetents (as I was) and who cannot simply admit (as I do) that they overestimated Mr. Bush’s capacity and were taken in.
I’m not going to defend the media use of the term civil war, any more than I would defend their use of “scandal” to describe Whitewater or Travelgate, or any of a thousand other examples you or I could dredge up. I freely admitted the press are lazy and have a pack mentality. In earlier comments I’ve freely admitted that they have a hard time deciding which side they’re on, and lack a degree of rigorousness that I’d like to see.
The problem is the unsupported leap from “the media screws up,” to “that’s why the war is losing popularity.” It’s just what I said: unsupported. There is plenty of evidence that reporters are often ninnies, there’s no evidence that this accounts for the fact that the American people are tiring of a war that has lasted three years and seems to have no coherent goal that the American people support, and a strategy that amounts to “let’s hope the Iraqis save our butts.”
The American people aren’t as dumb as you seem to think, Dave. They were told this would be quick, it turned out we’re looking at a minimum of six years of war. They were told we were going to get nukes away from Saddam. No nukes. They were told the war would finance itself. Turned out Iraq’s oil exports still aren’t back up. They were told it was absurd to expect that we would need a long-term, major comittment, and yet, here we are. The American people didn’t sign on to this war so Iraqis could vote for America-hating theocrats.
Hop in your time machine, TallDave, go back to 2003 and ask how many Americans want a war so that rather than being dominated by a murderous thug, Iraq can be dominated by Taliban-lite religious nuts. Right now, today, In Basra, a woman cannot safely walk down the street with her face uncovered. The thugs enforcing Sharia, are the very people we pretend are the new Democratic leaders of Iraq. You really think that’s why Americans agreed to this war? For this? It’s laughable.
Americans went to war thinking they were protecting the USA, and it turns out now we went to war so a bunch of Iraqi politicians we don’t know or care about can fight over how to split oil revenues between people who hate us, and some othe people who hate us even more. You think maybe that’s why the American people, after three years and hundreds of billions of dollars, and 2300 dead, and 17,000 guys with their legs blown off might have soured on this thing? Your theory is that the American people have been hoodwinked by the Washington Post, and if not for them we’d all be effing thrilled about draining off more billions and more men so that the Iraqi people can vote for a government of 12th century religious nuts?
Honest to God, it’s lunatic.
March 23rd, 2006 at 4:30 pm
Cal,
I will agree with you that the media has done a piss poor job of moving beyond the police blotter story during this war. I’ve been complaining about that for awhile.
What I still don’t buy is the argument that the media is significantly manipulating perception of this war. Or, rather, that the downward trend of support wouldn’t be happening if not for the media’s coverage. I’m not saying people’s perceptions aren’t influenced by how the media portrays things. I’m just saying that the influence is not enough to change the course of history. Too many other factors are at play.
A lot of people are making some pretty large conjectures about the influence of the media. Yes, there is media bias against the war. And, yes, there has been growing negativity towards the war. But correllation is not causation.
March 23rd, 2006 at 4:41 pm
As a side note, I think one of the reasons war supporters are so upset at the media is that we are in a war not directly related to our immediate security (at least not in any clearly defined way). Given that our casualty rate is quite low, we can stay in Iraq for as long as there is the will to stay in Iraq.
But if people lose that will, we lose the war. Losing the will was never really an issue in WWII where it was pretty dang clear that the Nazis and Japanese had no intention of letting us live in peace. With Iraq, it’s not hard to see why people think withdrawing wouldn’t negatively affect us.
So if the will to stay is the most important key to victory, then those who try to undermine that will are in effect trying to lose us the war. Thus the media, who in this theory control perceptions more than any other instititution, have the important job of keeping the will strong. They are not doing that and so people get angry at them.
By this logic, the media’s failings are more important than the military’s or the administration’s failings because it is the media that was trusted with the most important key to victory. We can afford to lose battles. We can’t afford to lose the will.
I don’t really buy it, but I buy parts of it.
March 23rd, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Cal:
I don’t at any point claim the media is doing its best. I claim that the media isn’t the reason Americans have soured on this war.
As for the Humvees, we go into every war with lousy equipment. But we generally go into those wars under some economic stress, with backed up demand for equipment, draftees rushed hurriedly into battle, insufficient transport for men or materiel.
The reason the case of the Humvees is so telling is that we could have solved the problem with no effort at all. No effort. We built the American Navy, Army and Air Corps virtually from scratch in 1942, in less time than it took us to up-armor some Humvees. We built 88,000 tanks in three years starting in 1942 when our economy as a nation would be dwarfed by the economy of modern California alone, and it was a strain to weld some plate metal onto some jeeps this time around?
This goes to comittment. It goes to seriousness. And that lack of commitment speaks volumes. We didn’t up-armor the Humvees because we weren’t dealing with a war, remember? There was no insurgency, just a few deluded dead-enders: some guys stealing that same vase from the museum, hah hah, crazy media and their silly videos. The war was over, our guys were coming home, why would we need more armor? It was a political decision. The reasons for that political decision had nothing to do with media, everything to do with incompetence and ideology and pet theories.
And the problem with trying to compare 2300 dead today with the much larger numbers in other wars is, of course, that those wars were judged to be necessary. The war for WMD, and to remove Saddam, ended three years ago. We found no WMD, we captured Saddam. That’s over. Today we are fighting so that Iraqi factions can decide which particular subset of America-haters will rule Iraq. 2000 plus dead seems harder to bear under those circumstances.
I don’t know if you have kids. I do. My son is still young. Would I send him off to stop Hitler and roll the Japs back across the Pacific? Reluctantly, yes. Would I send him to take nukes away from a madman like Saddam? Reluctantly, yes. Would I send him so that Iraqi Shia can establish an Iran style theocracy? No. But that’s where we are today.
March 23rd, 2006 at 4:59 pm
In defense of the New York Times.
I can’t take it anymore. I heart the New York Times. Despite being confined to the midwest, I read it everyday and I don’t understand how is it that the New York Times has become the modern day equivalent to Fox News. If you want a viable equivalent to Fox News try Air America, an openly left-leaning station, not one of the oldest most well-respected newspapers in the country.
Like Hillary Clinton, when the right sees a threat it seeks to destroy it. The NYT occasional foray into truth-telling doesn’t bode well for the adminstration right now, so rather than refute the facts, they attack the credibility of this multi Pulitzer-prize winning newspaper. It’s smart and effective, a newspaper’s credibility is all it has…and if it doesn’t have that, it’s US Weekly.
So, please either (a) stop acting like the NYT is an overtly liberal media source or (b) tell me a good reason, other than a few obscure references, why i’m wrong — like systematic problems at the NYT not just isolated incidents (please no Jason Blair,please, i beg).
March 23rd, 2006 at 5:00 pm
Alan:
That is a very good job of defining the logic of the media-bashers. And I agree that there is something to it. But not much.
This war started turning sour for people when no WMD were found. That was bad. It got worse when it became clear that the administration refused to get the fact that we were in a fight post-invasion. And it got a lot worse when we started justifying torture. Americans don’t want their men associated with that sort of thing. And when the Iraqi people voted against every pro-American politician they could identify, and in support of sectarian and ethnic leaders, that didn’t help a lot. Three years, with Mr. Bush talking about three more, the original goals rendered irrelevant, no end in sight, and the rallying cry is “As they stand up, we stand down.” The miracle is that the American people have tolerated it this long.
To paraphrase that tired Carville/Begala line: It’s the facts, stupid.
March 23rd, 2006 at 5:06 pm
I have a son who will be 16 in December. I’ve talked to him about the military as an option. I’ve encouraged him to look into the Navy, since he has an interest in living in Japan. I don’t think I’ve gotten very far with him. I’m neither encouraging nor discouraging, just making sure he sees it as an option.
The difficulty with enlistment is, you can’t sign up for only certain kinds of wars.
But listen, man, this is what I’m asking you to see: “judged” by whom? On what evidence? The media — by which I mean the handful of people who determine the bulk of the Iraq coverage — seem to me to play a disproportionate role in that.
Frankly, I have no idea how much role the media plays in shaping public perceptions. I only have anecdotal evidence of the people I get to see at close range. But that inclines me to think the media does have a significant impact, and the greater the distance between the media consumer and the place described, the more important the media is.
My parents never get to read Mark Steyn or Hitchens. They have, however, seen Michael Moore’s movie and read our newspaper and seen our local news. They are involved in small-town politics in their little borough of 2,000. They can see how far the local correspondent misses the mark in writing about what’s going on there. But when they read all the Iraq stories, they take them as gospel truth. And I needn’t tell you what they think of things there.
March 23rd, 2006 at 5:12 pm
According to a Pew Research Center survey reported in “Editor & Publisher,” the official publication of the U.S. news media, the proportion of self-defined “liberals” in newsrooms is increasing much faster than that of self-defined “conservatives,” and the ratio is well out of proportion to the nation as a whole.
At national organizations (which includes print, TV and radio), the numbers break down like this: 34% liberal, 7% conservative. At local outlets: 23% liberal, 12% conservative. At Web sites: 27% call themselves liberals, 13% conservatives.
This contrasts with the self-assessment of the general public: 20% liberal, 33% conservative.
Pew found that, over time, not only is the media more polarized, but the liberal voices are more numerous. Since 1995, at national outlets, the liberal segment has climbed from 22% to 34% while conservatives have inched up from 5% to 7%
This is a self-assessment. Most of the journalists, like many Americans, describe themselves as “moderate.” But from my experience, the majority of journalists who describe themselves as “moderates” actually break toward the left on most issues. If you consider the schism between newsrooms and the rest of the U.S., it’s not surprising that a “moderate” in the subculture will be a “liberal” in the larger culture.
March 23rd, 2006 at 5:15 pm
Meghan, try this:
http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664
It’s a serious academic statistical study of media bias from December.
The analysts took great pains to avoid bias or the appearance of it, going so far as to refuse outside funding and vetting their research staff to insure a balance of blue and red. The results of their labor: “Almost all major media outlets tilt left.”
Among the results:
I have some objections to the methodology of this study. The challenge in any such survey is to quantify “liberal” and “conservative” into measurable commodities. The only place this has been done is in political institutions. U.S. Congressmen routinely are sliced and diced by special interest groups which rank them in point systems on the scale of “liberal-to-conservative.” The researchers here chose one of the popular scorecards as a benchmark:
The next problem is, how do you turn the amorphous mass of news coverage into something that can be compared to the U.S. Congress?
Groseclose and Milyo tried to do it by going through 10 years of media transcripts and noting who was being quoted for context. They “tallied the number of times each media outlet referred to think tanks and policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.” Then they went through the U.S. lawmakers’ speeches and saw how often they cited the same organizations. “If a media outlet displayed a citation pattern similar to that of a lawmaker, then Groseclose and Milyo’s method assigned both a similar ADA score.”
It’s possible to “cite” something in a negative as well as a positive sense. You can cite the Heritage Foundation in an article or broadcast and surround it by such other citations that the reader or viewer will come away thinking the Heritage Foundation is full of crap. But it’s also possible to do this on the floor of Congress. So is it done more often in one place than the other? I don’t know if the survey considers this.
The ADA scorecard sets out to measure “liberalism.” The media survey seems to take the position that measuring liberalism is de facto measuring conservatism (the absence of liberalism) the way measuring heat is, by implication to measure cold (lower heat = more cold). But that is not quite true in this case. American politics tends to be bipolar and linear, but not entirely so. A Howard Dean compared to a John McCain compared to a Zell Miller compared to a Joe Lieberman compared to an Arlen Specter might break a simple up-and-down liberal-to-conservative model.
Based on the description of the methodology, the media study counts the number of times an institution is cited, but it doesn’t appear to account for the amount of time or space given to each institution in the coverage.
Finally, NAACP is not the exact equivalent of a conservative think tank. The right’s think tank culture grew out if its sense of exclusion from the universities. The think tanks were meant to be incubators of conservative ideas and supporters of conservative causes the way academe had become the incubator for the left. To make a more legitimate comparison, it seems to me, you’d have to count professors, too.
The NAACP is left-leaning, it is true. But its causes are not primarily identified with liberals to the exclusion of conservatives. Same with the ACLU. It’s possible that some of the citations used to suggest “liberal” leaning don’t really indicate that. It’s also possible that a vast amount of liberal sentiment coming out of academic citations was entirely overlooked in this report. The effect of this would be actually to undercount the liberalism of the media, which is sort of scary, given the results the report did come up with.
March 23rd, 2006 at 5:33 pm
Cal:
Since I’m from an Army family I naturally cannot endorse sending your son toward the Navy. My dad was a 20 year guy, US Army. Tried to get me to go to West Point at one point. (I pause for laughter.) I would actually encourage either of my kids to go into the service, as well, but my son is 9 so I have while before I have to deal with that.
I feel, by the way, that I should mention that the odd thing about my role in this debate is that I still don’t think Iraq is hopeless. I don’t like our odds, but I don’t think it’s over yet.
I’ll concede that the media has influence. I certainly wouldn’t debate your analysis of its influence on people you know: I’m sure you’re right. But I’ll make the point again that Fox and the WSJ and talk radio, not to mention the president himself and the GOP, have loud voices. People have a choice of whom to believe: uncritical boosters at Fox, or (to accept the premise for a moment) overly critical opponents at CNN. If they choose to believe the NYT over the WSJ, or CBS over Fox, or Kos over PowerLine, then isn’t it simply possible that the people have brought a degree of wisdom to the issue and reached rational conclusions?
During the Clinton impeachment there were endless complaints from Republicans that the people didn’t seem to “get it.” I wrote to Henry Hyde and suggested to him the possibility that the people got it pretty well. We are a democracy, after all, we do profess the belief that the people eventually, imprecisely, in most cases, will “get it” at least as well as any elite.
I think the people get this war. I think they get that we were looking for WMD to save New York from a mushroom cloud, and now we’re brokering political deals among factions who (with the exception of the Kurds) despise us and will do in Iraq what similar groups have done in Iran or Afghanistan. I don’t think the people get the details or the subtleties, but I think they know it’s no longer about anything that matters very much to them.
March 23rd, 2006 at 5:51 pm
One thing I’ve been meaning to point out is the schizophrenic nature of the WSJ, as alluded to in the UCLA report I cited. Their editorial pages are very “conservative.” But their news coverage is very liberal, to the degree that it has a leaning — and very good. My co-workers, of the High Church of Michael Moore, often praise the WSJ’s news reporting, even though they are certain they’d burst into flames if they ever read a word of its editorial page.
Meanwhile, Jeff Goldstein has been on this topic, too. I don’t know if he’s one of yours, but I always find him worth the trouble when he sits down to hash something out. Here’s part:
March 23rd, 2006 at 6:31 pm
This comment is from Tom Strong. It got lost in the shuffle.
———
It seems to me that, in another reality, the Bush Administration would not have a hard time spinning this “war” (like Alan, I think that term is really problematic) as a success. After all, the Baathist government was overthrown in fairly short order, a transitional government has been implemented, and elections have been held successfully. The costs have been high, and the ultimate outcome remains very uncertain, but given the unprecedented nature of the effort, that’s not too surprising.
The problem for the Administration in doing this, though, doesn’t simply lie with the media. As Alan has pointed out, the media is not a government branch or a conglomerate – it is made up of a huge number of individuals and companies with wildly diverging views. And despite the New York Times’ self-appointed status as the “paper of record,” it is not a good representative of “the mainstream media.” Most Americans still get their news from the TV and the radio, and the Bush Administration has more allies than enemies in these all-important branches.
Moreover, the media is a market – the individual companies that make it up are accountable to their investors’ pockets uber alles. It is a mostly capitalist institution, subject primarily to capitalist methods. So strange, therefore, that Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups better understand how to manipulate the media than our own government. (And I do agree with the argument here that media exposure is a huge part of their strategy – read this Mark Danner article that was published in the NYT some time back if you need some evidence of this.
Yet when wartime presidents, from Lincoln to Bush, try to influence the media, they almost always do so in ham-handed ways. And it boggles my mind that so many pro-war (and anti-war) bloggers seem to be pining for the media to get this sort of treatment. It’s a market, folks; and markets respond best to gentle pressure from below, not heavy pressure from above. That’s why, despite all their flaws, I think Pajamas Media and indymedia are generally good creations; they meet consumer interests that haven’t been met yet, and open up the possibility of new market forces.
The Bush Administration’s other problem is that it’s really complicit with the media in creating the now-prevailing image of the war as a total failure. They did this, to adopt management-speak for a moment, by over-promising and under-delivering, particularly since Cheney’s notorious “death-throes” speech. But the problems preceeded that – they have very consistently overplayed their PR hand, starting with the overemphasis on Saddam’s nuclear program in the run-up to the war. While that may or may not make them liars, it certainly does make them poor poker players.
March 23rd, 2006 at 6:49 pm
I think ‘the media’ is just one more item on the list of things Bush & Co. didn’t properly plan for regarding Iraq.
Righties have been jumping up and down about the liberal bias of the media since at least the Clinton administration. They seem to forget that when they whine about Bush losing the Iraqi PR war. Instead they hem and haw about the media doing exactly what they expected them to do. That is leadership my friends.
March 23rd, 2006 at 7:09 pm
If members of the media are so much more liberal than the populace at large (as Cal’s numbers seem to indicate) doesn’t that show that media bias has, at most, an indirect effect on the views of readers/viewers? If the media was as manipulative as a few here seem to think, wouldn’t the nation as a whole be a lot more liberal? I don’t know the answer to that.
As for The New York Times, I also used to think the cries of it being biased were innacurate. And then I started paying attention to how their reporters word things and what assumptions they bring to stories. And I found the NYT to be about as stridently left as Fox News is right. Neither news organization is outside the mainstream by any stretch, but both exhibit rather obvious biases.
March 23rd, 2006 at 8:00 pm
Meghan, unless you’re presenting yourself to us as the absolute fulcrum point in the balance of contemporary American politics, your finding the NYT fair, balanced, and just right is hardly an argument for the newspaper not being editorially liberal.
March 23rd, 2006 at 8:39 pm
I’m less interested in the people who want to blame it all on the media than I am in the media itself.
You, personally, have a high sense of honor. You take responsibility for what you have said, and if you supported something that turns out to be a big mess, you will own up to your share of the blame for that.
Even though you and I and the other members of the 101st Keyboardists or whatever it is the sneering “chickenhawk” left calls us had minimal effect on the outcome of the thing just by writing about it — as they tirelessly remind us. We took positions, we put forth words. Ideas have consequences.
How much larger and more dramatic than we are the big, legacy media outlets? If we drop pebbles in the pool, they splash boulders. Why would you not hold them to the same standard you hold yourself to? If you search your soul over the consequences of what you wrote, shouldn’t they?
ASC:
Only if they see it. Check out circulation/viewership numbers.
March 24th, 2006 at 7:24 am
Michael,
Sorry I didn’t make it back. I got so bored trying to follow this thread that I fell asleep on my keyboard.
Listen, if you think it’s worth your time to defend the media, of course it’s free country and it’s your time. But frankly, the same old, tired arguments–from the Bushies and their crtics alike–has devolved into so much crap tha has nothing to do with reality.
The banner “argument” is so stupid as to be nothing more than childish whining, and exposes the person making it as unserious. There is so much to be pissed off about with this president. Braying about a banner may make for what Howard Dean thinks is a good commercial, but it doesn’t register with people who give a damn issues.
Same with the media “issue.” Somehow, just after Bush’s presser the other day, after a bit of criticism about the myopic media view, what do the media come up with? They interview each other about how truly pure they are. Most Americans (including yours truly) could care less how Tim Russert votes. They just want him to quit bitching and get back to work.
March 24th, 2006 at 8:17 am
Uh, so sorry for the typos. S/B “give a damn about issues.” Among others.
March 24th, 2006 at 9:38 am
Victor Hanson, military historian, apparently also a “table-banger.”
http://radioblogger.com/#001497
HH: Have we seen this…you’re a military historian. In other campaigns, and other drawn-out wars, have we seen the American left ally with elite media to wage war on the war?
VDH: Well, we saw it in Vietnam, and a good example was when Walter Cronkite came back and said the war was lost after Tet, even though in just one of the most heroic chapters in the history of the U.S. Marine Corps, in Hue, and then the U.S. Air force at Que Son, the U.S. Army in Saigon itself, we killed over 50,000 Vietnamese, North Vietnamese Communists, and lost 1,500, and really destroyed the Viet Cong in the South for over a year, and we were told that was a grievous defeat, because the media covered it in such a way it suggested that terrorists were on the Embassy grounds.
March 24th, 2006 at 9:41 am
Name me one place it was safe to criticize Saddam Hussein.
Northern Iraq.
Well, the residents of Halabja might disagree.
And it isn’t safe, in fact far safer, today?
March 24th, 2006 at 9:51 am
The American people aren’t as dumb as you seem to think, Dave. They were told this would be quick, it turned out we’re looking at a minimum of six years of war. They were told we were going to get nukes away from Saddam. No nukes. They were told the war would finance itself. Turned out Iraq’s oil exports still aren’t back up. They were told it was absurd to expect that we would need a long-term, major comittment, and yet, here we are. The American people didn’t sign on to this war so Iraqis could vote for America-hating theocrats.
I don’t know about the American people, but you aren’t demonstrating a lot of intelligence here.
They said the invasion would be quick, and it was. We knew that building democracy would be more difficult, though of course almost no one thought the violence would continue this long. Nevertheless, we did accomplish our major goals in short order.
Six years minimum of war? You’re basing that on what, besides your own wishful thinking? Yes, there will be troops in Iraq in 2009. We have troops in Germany and S Korea too, not to mention Kosovo. That doesn’t mean they’re at war. The Iraqis will be handling the issues themselves by 2007.
Nukes? Well, no one said he HAD them, just that he wanted them, and unless you’re going to argue Saddam had reformed, removing the regime was the only way to prevent him from eventually succeeding in his aim to get them.
The war did cost more than advertised. Well, most wars do.
Three years isn’t a long-term commitment. As for major, it’s likely the bulk of our troops will come home by 2007.
March 24th, 2006 at 10:03 am
Look, clearly all is not wine and roses in Iraq. There are challenges and setbacks. The problem is that as far as our media is concerned, that’s all there is.
For instance, here was a series of operations along the Euphrates a few months ago, to take a dozen or towns back from terrorists and hand their security over to the ISF, laying the foundation for the elections. The media ignored it almost completely. I only knew about it because I read Bill Roggio and the Pentagon press releases. How is that even possible?
Last, as Mort Kondracke pointed out, where are the war heroes? Why doesn’t the media cover our Silver Star recipients? Why do more people know Lynndie England’s name than Master Sergeant Swanson, whose innovative turret shield is credited with saving dozens of lives? The only one most people could name is Jessica Lynch, and as she says she’s not even a hero, she’s just somebody who got shot and captured and was rescued. Where are the hosannas for the brave Iraqis defending democracy at great personal risk?
It ain’t about lollipops.
March 24th, 2006 at 10:08 am
Meredith,
A strawman is when you make a weak argument that exists only to be knocked down, like when Michael says we’re complaining the media isn’t covering Marines handing out lollipops.
March 24th, 2006 at 10:29 am
TallDave:
What am I basing six years of war on? Three years so far, and Mr. Bush says we won’t be out before he’s finished with his term. 3 plus 3 equals 6.
And I’d love to see some evidence that Mr. Bush, prior to the invasion, told us we’d be there nation-building for six years. Rather the contrary: as you may recall this whole thing was to be self-financing.
So far, TD, you haven’t laid a glove on me despite your many, many comments. You’re making absurd statements like “no one said he HAD nukes.” I didn’t say he HAD nukes, either. And yet, the invasion was justified by clear and unmistakable hints that he would shortly have nukes. So, please. This isn’t the echo chamber you often frequent.
As for silver star recipients, they are covered, as they have always been, by local media where they live. A silver star has never been national news with a very few exceptions.
As for coverage of every op, first of all, for the most part the military doesn’t want ops covered from the field while they’re on-going because of obvious concerns. They want them covered through the command, which means in TV terms, a press conference with a general. Not great TV. Now, why don’t you answer a question: has Fox or talk radio or the WSJ covered every silver star recipient? You referenced blogs as your source. If these are great stories, why aren’t they being covered by Mr. Cheney’s favorite news network? ‘Splain that to me? Is Fox a part of the liberal media conspiracy?
Daniel:
I didn’t bring up the banner, you did. I referenced the sentiment: mission accomplished. I believe the other phrase was that major combat operations were ended. The president donned a jumpsuit, landed a plane on an aircraft carrier, and signaled unmistakably that we were just about done — a sentiment echoed when Tommy Franks refused reinforcements and began planning to cut forces to 40,000. They thought the fight was over, they were wrong.
March 24th, 2006 at 10:50 am
Callimachus,
No, I do not intend to present myself as a fulcrum of american politics, at all. My point is much more simple: there is quality and there is content. You many not like the content of the NYT, but you can’t debate it’s quality. And quality journalism has been going out of style in the US for quite some time, so I find it sad to undervalue the imporatance of continuing to produce high-quaility nationally-circulated newspapers.
The NYT is good journalism, it’s stories are original, well-written, informative, detailed, highly-accurate and newsworthy. I just think people are getting less and less news in their news these days, even on the network nightly newscasts. A 60 Second “World Minute” is sad and pathetic. If you ever watch the BBC news they don’t divide their news into Britain, and “the rest of the world in 60 seconds”. I just don’t see the value in discouraging people from reading the NYT to become informed, I wish more people would read the news, be it from the Washington Post/WSJ or NYT, because otherwise we will, and do, debate the easily-digestible 15-second soubdbite news offered up by CNN and Fox, and that’s pathetically uninformative.
A few words on bias, not supported by any reputable academic study, but pure personal experience:
I remember back in the days I sat mildly paying attention in journalism school at a certain midwestern state university, a professor who moonilghted with the Poynter Institue explaining the conundruum of media bias by citing a study (and no, i don’t have it, this is pure fuzzy college recollection) that suggested that reporters who were self-described “left-leaning” would oftentimes overcompensate for this self-recognized internal bias by tending to cover issues more conservatively. We were asked by this professor to sit there and think of biasses we may have that we have: religious, political, racial, gender etc. and then discussed the implications those biasses may have on the way we cover a story. I have no anecdote, and I can assure you we didn’t solve the problem between 11:10 and 12:00 that afternoon. However, it is something to think about. Pining away for a completely objective press is like wishing for world peace, you’re not going to get it. Complaining about a media outlet leaning this way or that way isn’t going to get you much farther than the obvious: media outlets are not homogenous and they will vary from one to the next. What will get you far though is demanding thoughtful, inciteful, well-written, ACCURATE journalism. Then, no matter which way your information sways, hopefully you’ll be getting more than a 15 second soundbite or two talking heads trying to cram a gray-area into a black or white box. So, if people choose to read the NYT, great. The WSJ, super. The Washington Post, fine. The BBC, good. We should always be critical of the media, especially the media that is widely-circulated and relied on, but my simple little point is this: the NYT is a quality product. The right, however, tries to strip it of it’s credibility in ways that I think are wholly unfair, by just repeating over and over and over ad nauseum that it’s this inciteful leftist manifesto published 7 days a week. I don’t mean to compare the content of the NYT with that of FOX, but rather the quality. FOX news, regardless of political leanings is not quality journalism and neither is CNN for that matter, they’re like reading the headlines without the story. There’s never, ever have any stories, always just headlines …
If we want to whine about the media, we should whine about the deterioration in quality and not the political leanings of its content. To me, complaining about the political leanings of Fox vs. CNN is like comparing two bags of stale chips. One may be barbecue, one may be sour cream, but it really doesn’t matter because they’re both stale, they both suck and you should demand at the very least they be edible, before you complain about the flavor. (sorry, that’s a lame analogy, but it’s the best i can do.)
March 24th, 2006 at 12:43 pm
Cal,
We probably agree more than disagree. I certainly acknowledge the existence of media bias and do think many media groups do not admit the flaws within to the point of becoming blind to their own shortcomings and innacuracies.
But, I question the actual affect of media bias on people’s perception. That would make for an interesting study–but a difficult one to do properly.
March 24th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
The sad fact we’re even discussing this validates the wingnuts framing of the “MSM” as “biased” and disctracts from real discussion on the Iraq war. Don’t believe the hype.
March 25th, 2006 at 10:39 am
Michael,
I was responding to Meredith’s post about the banner, so I absolutely did not bring it up.
As it is, the banner is long gone, and undoubtedly was a blunder. Let’s chalk that one up with “peace in our time” and “there is no genocide in Rwanda” and “we had no reason to detain bin Laden.” Then again, one seems to be hyperbole and triumphalism while the other three have turned out to be outright lies.
I am not among those who scream about media bias, seeing the malaise in the Fourth Estate as a result of laziness (witness this week’s meme-of-the-moment, “blaming the messenger”) more than bias. However, many people who feel compelled to defend the media (I do not include you, here) seem to see bias only when they are talking about FOX (which, truth be told, is too many times a train wreck, but they do tend to follow stories that other outlets ignore). Otherwise, the media is populated by only those with pure motives to tell the truth. But day in and day out, evidence to the contrary comes forth, and the media engage in the same sort of misdirection that the administration employs.
By their own actions, the media are damaging their standing with the American people. I don’t, and have never, advocate that the media only present positive news. The Iraq campaign has been clearly botched in many ways, and we would not know that without an antagonistic press.
What is unacceptable, is the characterization that this is the only inept administration in our history, or that, in Helen Thomas’ own words, that Bush is “the worst president in history.” When we read these words, we are quite right to question the vaunted objectivity of the press.
The media woud do better to put their bias (if they have any) front and center and report thusly. We’ve never had a neutral press, and I don’t know that we would actually want one. This myth came into vogue in the wake of Watergate and should be disposed of.
March 25th, 2006 at 2:44 pm
Daniel:
Sorry, I apologize for misreading that. Many comments, short attention span, no excuse.