Debate rages over media’s role in Iraq war

[Roon]

Are the images Americans are seeing from Iraq due to the level of violence or is it just the messenger? And, as President Bush suggested Tuesday at a White House news conference, are the media also being used by the insurgents?

“They're capable of blowing up innocent life,” Bush said, “So it ends up on your TV show.”

As opposition to the war rises, it's a theme amplified by Vice President Dick Cheney and conservative talk show hosts: a supposedly passive, even lazy media is focusing too much on random violence.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11947276/

Wasn't this an issue during Vietnam too?

[physioex]

1. Yea I saw that Andrea Mitchell Piece....

To which I say, there are plenty of Faux News pozers. Send some to Iraq to report the truth.....

[incapsulated]

2. Everything old is new again

Even BushCo. has pulled this shit before, blame the media when there is no one left to blame but themselves. It didn't work then, it won't now.

I DO expect the usual asskissing CNN etc. to run and do a slate of "Happy news from Iraq" reports now, for a month, like they did the last time.

[physioex]

3. Don't count on it......

Most reporters are too scared to go and mingle with the common folks....

[incapsulated]

6. They don't have to

Just put an embed with a well-armed unit to cover a school being built. Job done. If nothing explodes, of course.

[Pirate Smile]

4. This is what the WH wants the debate to be about instead of them.

[dchill]

5. If they want to debate the media's role...

they should be debating whether the media ignored the real WMD/Iraq-al Qaeda connection evidence - the lack of any such thing. Anyone who parrots the White House claims about "innocent lives blowing up on your TV show" is merely a pundit, not anything even approaching a journalist.

The only ethical debate here is whether they are showing us what is really happening or just putting more lipstick on the pig. The level of violence is obviously higher and deeper than what the media are showing us.

[rocktivity]

7. REALITY was the issue during Vietnam, too.

Americans turned against Viet Nam because it became clear that America could not win it. And America didn't win it for pretty much the same reason why Bush will never win in Iraq: things have reached the point where you can no longer tell the enemy from the citizenry.

Less than a week after 9/11, I said that if "we'd better put some thought into HOW we retalilate, or we'll end up with a war that has Viet Nam's fingerprints all over it."

:headbang:
rocknation

[mmonk]

8. Blood on the soul. Who's fault?

[Jack Rabbit]

9. That was when a lot of the anti-media tenor on the right began

Specifically, it began with Vice President Agnew's speech denouncing the media for liberal bias in the fall of 1969. The right still uses some of the same trash talk, ignoring the fact that it applies even less now than it did then, and it didn't really apply then.