[Anyone] the "news"

[Thos Myers]

Published on Friday, February 9, 2007 by the Toronto Star

Real News Loses to Fluff Again

by Antonia Zerbisias


Anybody want to bet against me that, over the next few days, the U.S.
media will be more consumed with the sudden death of DDD-list blond
bombshell Anna Nicole Smith than with Tuesday's report by a U.S.
congressional committee that an estimated $12 billion (U.S.)  360 tons of
shrink-wrapped C-notes  were flown to Iraq between May 2003 and June 2004?

No, I didn't think so, even though the cash can't be accounted for, even
though there are suspicions that much of it ended up with the insurgency,
even though U.S. troops are getting killed for lack of proper armour and
equipment.

Turn on the news and it's been all about "astro-nut" Lisa Nowak, she who
should land a Depends endorsement deal, and her wild cross-country pursuit
of love lost in space. Or something like that. Fill in your own space
oddity pun. Every news organization has, as Jon Stewart pointed out the
other night.

So here we are, on the eve of the fifth year of the Iraq invasion, and the
"shock and awe" continues to be that the mainstream media watchdogs rolled
over for the Bush-Cheney war and have yet to report on where they went
wrong, what they missed, what they ignored, what they buried.

(This, by the way, is not an attack on the journalists who have risked
and even lost  their lives covering the conflict.)

Oh sure there have been a few mea culpas, I-got-it-wrongs, and slap me
sillies with my soft-white-pundit's hands along the way from the likes of
the Toronto Sun's Lorrie Goldstein, the National Post's Jonathan Kay and
the National Review's Jonah Goldberg, who in 2002 wrote, "The United
States needs to go to war with Iraq because it needs to go to war with
someone in the region and Iraq makes the most sense."

But nowhere have the media answered the kinds of questions posed this week
by a veteran editor in the Nieman Watchdog, published by the Nieman
Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

Among the questions raised by Gilbert Cranberg, former editorial page
editor of the Des Moines Register and Tribune: "Why did the New York Times
and others parrot administration claims about Iraq's acquisition of
aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons when independent experts were readily
available to debunk the claims?

"Why was a report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
accusing the administration of misusing intelligence by misrepresenting
and distorting it given two paragraphs in the Times and 700 words in the
(Washington) Post (but deep inside), with neither story citing the
report's reference to distorted and misrepresented intelligence?

"Why did Colin Powell's pivotal presentation to the United Nations receive
immediate and overwhelming press approval despite its evident weaknesses
and even fabrications?

"Why did the British press, unlike its American counterpart, critically
dissect the speech and regard it with scorn?

"Why did the Associated Press wait six months, when the body count began
to rise, to distribute a major piece by AP's Charles Hanley challenging
Powell's evidence and why did Hanley say how frustrating it had been until
then to break through the self-censorship imposed by his editors on
negative news about Iraq?"

Why indeed?

But why is not a question often answered nowadays. It's all about who. The
celebrity who. The space cadet who. The who did who.

The danger is that, as the Bush-Cheney administration continues its
bellicose bellowing, not only about Iraq but also Iran, the media again
take at face value whatever the White House throws its way, not investing
the resources to go beyond cheap and easy "live" time-fillers.

Oh, and if you think that what happens on their news doesn't affect
Canada, think again. It would be a much easier sell for the Harper
government to march us unto war if the Amnets and their counterparts in
print once again did not do their jobs.

Meanwhile, don't wait for serious discussion of the missing billions or
another downed U.S. chopper. For the next few days, your TV will become a
boob tube. Can't you see it already: "Thanks for the mammaries."

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FEAR: The media world is buzzing about this sound byte New York Times
chair and publisher Arthur Sulzberger gave Israel's Haaretz; "I really
don't know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years, and you know
what? I don't care either.


"The Internet is a wonderful place to be, and we're leading there."

------------------------------------------------------------------------
LOATHING: Then there's this from News Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch, picked
up by the Hollywood Reporter at last month's World Economic Forum in
Davos, Switzerland. Asked if his media empire attempted to set the agenda
on the war in Iraq, he said: "No, I don't think so. We tried." Tried and
succeeded.



 Copyright Toronto Star

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