Saturday, May 15, 2004
Our Media, In Damage Overdrive
Brent Bozell: The arrival of the Iraqi prisoner abuse story shows what Jim Wright once called "mindless cannibalism" can overtake the media’s war reporting.
While reporters murmur about the White House trying to do "damage control," they do not describe their own activity, best defined as "damage overdrive."
There is nothing sicker than to see the Katies and Matts clucking about how these pictures will do us great damage around the world – and can we show them to you again, for the fifty-seventh time, for the fourteenth straight day?
Does America have the "right to know," to see every image of smiling American morons at Abu Ghraib?
When a vicious mob shot four American contractors, mutilated them, burned their corpses, dragged them through the streets, and hung body parts from bridges. Like the prisoner-abuse story, this was the ugliness, the horror of war.
But in this case, most in the media determined the public did not have a right to see the pictures.
Now the networks are back on Iraq, babbling endlessly, passing moral judgment, touting their own moral authority. They have none. They tout the "right to know" as they exploit the right to sensationalize and propagandize.
The media’s concern for America’s image is no match for their power lust to rid Washington of Donald Rumsfeld, and – they dream – eventually President Bush as well.
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Boston Globe: A series of errors on lewd images
'Boston Globe' Ombud on Sex Photo Mistake
Bad Journalism: The Chain of Command
Editor sacked over 'hoax' photos
Brent Bozell: The arrival of the Iraqi prisoner abuse story shows what Jim Wright once called "mindless cannibalism" can overtake the media’s war reporting.
While reporters murmur about the White House trying to do "damage control," they do not describe their own activity, best defined as "damage overdrive."
There is nothing sicker than to see the Katies and Matts clucking about how these pictures will do us great damage around the world – and can we show them to you again, for the fifty-seventh time, for the fourteenth straight day?
Does America have the "right to know," to see every image of smiling American morons at Abu Ghraib?
When a vicious mob shot four American contractors, mutilated them, burned their corpses, dragged them through the streets, and hung body parts from bridges. Like the prisoner-abuse story, this was the ugliness, the horror of war.
But in this case, most in the media determined the public did not have a right to see the pictures.
Now the networks are back on Iraq, babbling endlessly, passing moral judgment, touting their own moral authority. They have none. They tout the "right to know" as they exploit the right to sensationalize and propagandize.
The media’s concern for America’s image is no match for their power lust to rid Washington of Donald Rumsfeld, and – they dream – eventually President Bush as well.
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Boston Globe: A series of errors on lewd images
'Boston Globe' Ombud on Sex Photo Mistake
Bad Journalism: The Chain of Command
Editor sacked over 'hoax' photos
