Page 30 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

US journalism 19
The supposed choice guaranteed to US citizens by competition for cable-news
viewers was nothing of the sort. Having repeatedly instructed him to feature more
right-wing people on his programme, MSNBC fired its liberal talk-show host Phil
Donahue immediately prior to the 2003 invasion, even though he had the net-
work’s top-rating programme, because his ‘anti-war agenda’ would look bad
when ‘our competitors are waving the flag...a difficult face for NBC in a time
of war’. This was a programme that showcased more pro-war than anti-war guests
(quoted in FAIR 2003c and Nader 2003; also see Ellis 2003). MSNBC hired as a
talk show host the improbably hypocritical Republican Joe Scarborough. As a
Congressman, he had appeared on Fox during the 1999 bombing of Serbia and
described the assault as ‘an unmitigated disaster’, specifying ‘the people in
Belgrade we’ve killed...the refugees that we’ve killed...the people in nursing
homes...the people in hospitals’. Four years later, as the focal point of MSNBC
Reports, he attacked ‘leftist stooges for anti-American causes’ whose beliefs
‘could hurt American troop morale’ by criticizing military actions. He ranted that
such people must be held accountable for their views (quoted in Rendall 2003) –
unlike Scarborough himself. Such double standards are hardly surprising, given
that the network’s parent is the world’s biggest arms supplier, General Electric, a
conflict of interest rarely discussed openly.
Consider also the extraordinary proliferation of superannuated military and
government white men who are deemed to be competent media commentators
on what their colleagues are doing. More than half of US TV-studio guests talk-
ing about the impending action in Iraq in 2003 were former or contemporary
US military or governmental personnel (FAIR 2003b). Television news effectively
diminished the available discourse on the impending struggle to one of technical
efficiency or state propaganda. A study conducted through the life of the Iraq
invasion reveals that US broadcast and cable news virtually excluded anti-war or
internationalist points of view: 64 per cent of all pundits were pro-war, while
71 per cent of US ‘experts’ favoured the war. Anti-war voices were 10 per cent of
all sources but just 6 per cent of non-Iraqi sources and 3 per cent of US speakers.
Viewers were more than six times as likely to see a pro-war than an anti-war
source, and amongst US guests, the ratio increased to 25:1 (Rendall and
Broughel 2003). When the vast majority of outside experts represent official
opinion, how is this different from a state-controlled media (Johnson 2003)? The
Los Angeles Times refers to these has-beens and never-wases like this: ‘[p]art
experts and part reporters, they’re marketing tools, as well’ – and of course, the
retired killing-machine hacks are paid for their services, something quite shock-
ing given the traditions of independent critique (Jensen 2003). Their virtually uni-
versal links to arms-trading are rarely divulged and never discussed as relevant.
Retired Lieutenant General Barry McCaffrey, employed in this capacity by NBC
News, points to the cadre’s ‘lifetime of experience and objectivity’. In his case,
this involves membership of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a lobby
group dedicated to influencing the media, and the boards of three munitions com-
panies that make ordnance he proceeded to praise on MSNBC. Nine members of
the US government’s Defence Policy Board have links to companies with defense