The extraordinary performance of the U.S. press on Iraq is the most telling part of 2003's top story. Inimitable commentator Jimmy Breslin describes that performance as "the worst failure to inform the public that we have seen; the Pekingese of the press run clip-clop along the hall to the next government press conference." Commenting on the prevailing practice of reciting the official line, another pundit has branded journalists and broadcasters alike little more than "ventriloquists' dummies."
The 18th century British statesman Edmund Burke coined "fourth estate" in circumstances similar to those of today here in this former British colony. It was before we rebelled against the ruling George of the time-George III, whom Burke castigated for trying to enlarge the power of the crown.
In his pamphlet "Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents" (1770), Burke argued that although King George's actions were legal in the sense that they were not against the letter of the constitution, they were all the more against its spirit. As for the American colonies, Burke argued strongly for a more flexible approach, one enlightened by "moral principle," but British imperial policy ignored him and lost America. And that, as our own George I (George H. W. Bush) would say, is history.
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Indeed, perhaps you need to have been around for Vietnam and for Watergate to have some sense of how the media have deteriorated in one brief generation. The mainstream press is now giving our imperial president, our "George II," a free pass.
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The unholy marriage of conglomerate press and government is the Achilles' heel of our democracy-and a fillip to fascism. We are inching closer to the modus operandi of Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels than to Edmund Burke's ideal of a press as watchdog, holding the barbarians at the gates.
As freelance journalist and press observer Ron Callari has noted, U.S. media are now populated by "well-paid conformists" whose voices are owned by the major corporations that pay them so well. Callari decries the "dumbing down" of the media and asks whether a people can be truly free if Big Brother can spoon-feed them what to believe.
Sadly, there is no lack of examples that can be adduced. How can it be, for instance, that the press has completely missed recent signs that the administration plans to stretch out the quest for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction beyond next November?
The most recent hint of this came in a last sentence buried in an unnoticed Christmas Eve story by The Washington Post's Walter Pincus (who actually was writing about something else). Pincus merely noted in passing that the WMD search in Iraq "is expected to continue for at least another year, according to administration sources."
Like until after the election? Transparent, no? And yet, if the recent past is precedent, the mainstream press will let the administration get away with it.
Or consider that the Post on Sept. 18, 2003 buried on page A18 President Bush's admission the previous day that "there has been no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th." This admission came after many months of artful White House rhetoric that strongly implied just the opposite-with remarkable success in getting a large majority of the American people to believe it. And on Dec. 23, 2003, the Post kept out of its news section altogether retired Marine General Anthony Zinni's biting critique of the U.S. policy on Iraq, relegating it to the "Style" section. Until he retired in 2000, Zinni commanded all U.S. troops in the area of the Persian Gulf.
Lest we begin the New Year thoroughly depressed, we shall call a halt after one more example. Recall the initial press reporting on Jessica Lynch: ambushed by the Iraqis, courageously firing her weapon until her ammunition ran out, shot, stabbed, raped and then rescued in a daring nighttime raid videotaped for showing around the world.
But U.S. media dropped Jessica Lynch as soon as it became clear that she was not going to cooperate with Pentagon yarn spinners. Good for Private Lynch. This young woman from rural West Virginia knows the difference between the truth and a lie.
If only that were so in the case of our president, who asks, without a trace of shame, "What's the difference?"-the question this time being the difference between whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction last year or not; i. e., whether the ostensible justification for attacking Iraq was real or was manufactured out of whole cloth.
