Page 32 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

US journalism 21
cited Puerto Rico as an instance of the US as a benign despot. Similar sentiments
are on display from think-tankers in the Weekly Standard, Foreign Affairs, the
Harvard Review, and Atlantic Monthly. Robert Kaplan hails the Monroe
Doctrine, the justification for two centuries of aiding fascism and mass poverty
in Latin America, as a model for world hegemony by the United States, because
it shows how to crush leftism (Schell 2003). And journalism professor Lance
Morrow writes an essay entitled ‘The Case for Rage and Retribution’ in Time that
calls for ‘the nourishment of rage...purple American fury...focused brutality’
(quoted in Eisman 2003: 60). The neo conservative minority has taken a term
once used derisively by the left and made it a badge of honour and identification.
The reality of the US as an imperialist nation is suddenly embraced (Wade 2003).
Absent access to adequate academic analysis, in Edward Said’s words, ‘the airwaves
are filled with ex-military men, terrorism experts, and Middle Eastern policy
analysts who know none of the relevant languages, may never have seen any part of
the Middle East, and are too poorly educated to be expert at anything’ (2003).

Conclusion
Comprehensive studies by the Program on International Policy Attitudes and
Knowledge Networks (2003 and 2004; Kull et al. 2003–2004) found that a minority
of the US population knew that clear majorities all over the world opposed the 2003
invasion, and a significant minority thought the war was supported globally. These
people also believed that there were indisputable ties between Iraq and September
11 and that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. The credulity held
firm a year after the invasion, and it correlated with viewers’ support for the
Republican Party and their consumption of commercial TV news. The truth was
only known to those who watched or listened to public broadcasting.
The extent and power of this bulwark of ignorance and violence have led Robert
Fisk (2002), the Independent newspaper’s noted foreign correspondent, to the
brink of despair in the face of the hysteria his reports engender here. Ex-US
diplomat George Dempsey identified Fisk as partly to blame for the events of
September 11 (International Federation of Journalists 2001: 13), and actor John
Malkovich told the Cambridge Union that he ‘would like to shoot’ Fisk. The
reporter’s reaction was to say: ‘If we want a quiet life, we will just have to toe the
line, stop criticizing Israel or America. Or just stop writing altogether’(Fisk 2002).
Brave seekers after truth on CBS’s Face the Nation almost joked with the egre-
gious Rumsfeld about a serious matter – that, in David Martin’s words, ‘You’ve
turned into a Secretary of War’, to which the oily technocrat replied ‘That’s true’
(Washington File 2003). Similar rejoicing could be heard from Rather on Larry
King Live during the invasion:

Look, I’m an American. I never tried to kid anybody that I’m some
internationalist or something. And when my country is at war, I want my country
to win, whatever the definition of ‘win’ may be. Now, I can’t and don’t argue
that that is coverage without a prejudice. About that I am prejudiced.