Bigger elephant, smaller room...
The Pentagon practice of pimping out "military analysts" for on-air color commentary is one of the most extravagantly ignored news topics since Larry Craig's post-toilet troll Senate career, but with With Sen. Carl Levin thumping the table, maybe the story will finally hit the front pages and top the newscasts of mainstream American media.
Since the New York Times (not exactly an Iraq War foe) detailed the obvious over the weekend, the story has gotten zip coverage in the press. Searching for any mention online draws up entries from out-of-the-way news sites like Politics Today and dailies like... the Tampa Tribune, which reprint the story from the Times wire. Not exactly "hub journalism".
Few Americans with attention spans were surprised by revelations that top networks - including ABC, NBC and Fox - relied on Pentagon-provided experts. Even though Rumfeld junked his much-assailed Office of Strategic Influence in 2001, no one doubted the American War Community would abandon all hope of fully functional command-post PR. After all, Rumsfeld himself noted at the time, "...If you want to savage this thing fine I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have." So they wised up and dumped the name - but not the operation.
After all, they gotta do what they gotta-damn do.
And no one but Hagee and Lieberman think these military experts give objective opinions when they outline strategy for mousse-dependent newscasters and Fox bimbos. Under the pancake, they don't forget the mission: To a man, they have helped shovel dump for this Administration's Mideast Mandate - everything from assuring viewers yet another corner has been turned, to outlining the Iran's hand in booby-trapping Iraqi Mallomars. The awed, dumbstruck news teams underwrite this warped propaganda with their characteristic obsequiousness.
So, finally, Levin asks Defense Secretary Gates "what gives?" and that maybe... uh... someday... he might want to think about... if he's not too busy, y'understand... looking into this in-house flack operation.
Will this get ignored, too? As embarrassing as it is for the news giants to be revealed as Iraq War enablers, isn't it even more galling to pretend it never happened, that the past is just dross for the "reality-based" unwashed?
It's increasingly clear that the MSM will never change. They are corporations with an inescapable innate bias.
News shouldn't be any of their business, really.
It's inherently impossible for any of these corporations to be fair and balanced. The only ones in the world that thing they're objective are themselves.
What we're hearing every day is a result of which campaign complains the loudest. The winner gets their talking points repeated incessantly. When one commentator said "Obama can't close the deal", the next day all the commentators on every station simply parroted that. I find it hard to believe that Brian Williams, Pat Buchanaan, Sean Hannity, Wolf Blitzer, Chris Matthews, Chris Wallace and others all came up with "he can't close the deal" independently.
If I had to guess, it was a free advertisement placed by Howard Wolfson. If not, Pat B. is the next best guess.
April 23, 2008 12:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, in defense of the MSM, they do have WAY more important stories to be covering: like flag pins.
April 23, 2008 1:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you're really incensed about it, pick up a phone and start calling newspapers; fire up your computer and shoot emails to the networks, linking the story; buy some postage and start writing letters to editors; tell Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert. Go tell it on the mountain.
April 23, 2008 6:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, I would... if I had a hammer...
April 23, 2008 6:06 PM | Reply | Permalink