Page 296 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

286 Chapter I I

tion from corporate reporters, at least not within headline coverage. Balanced
reporting, apparently, does not require that statements of the Bush adrninistra-
tion be challenged by critical intelligence questioning whether Iran really consti-
tutes an emerging threat.
"Professional" reporting clearly favors complimentary lines of questioning
American political leaders, in which commentators ponder procedural points,
such as whether the U.S. has the power, rather than the legal right, to conduct
"surgical" strikes against suspected Iranian nuclear sites.33 Challenges to official
statements about Iran seem to come up mainly when other high level intelli-
gence bodies and political leaders challenge them, further evidence of the index-
ing effect at work.
As with the case of Syria, the same charges of collusion with A1 Qaeda and
meddling in Iraq are re-applied against the Iranian theocracy. In one instance,
Wolf Blitzer of Cmand Robin Wright of the Washington Post spoke of what is
"believed to be a connection" between Iran and Al ~aeda.~~ White House's
The
warnings against Iran for "interfering with its efforts to organize a government"
in Iraq fail to elicit much skepticism, as American leaders and the establishment
media assume that their own presence in Iraq does not count as a foreign or un-
wanted meddling.35 Only Iranian or Syrian intrusion, rather than American in-
trusion in Iraq, is of major concern.36
Media attention is also devoted to censuring "Iranian-trained agents" who
"have crossed into southern Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein and are work-
ing in the cities of Najaf, Karbala, and Basra to promote friendly Shiite clerics
and advance Iranian intere~ts."~' Media outlets uncritically report the admini-
stration's assumptions regarding what constitutes legitimate democracy in other
countries: hence the failure to challenge the argument that "an Iranian model of
government would not be consistent with the democratic and pluralistic princi-
ples the United States believes should be adopted by an emerging Iraqi govern-
ment," regardless of whether the Iraqi people choose such a religiously-inspired
government on their own.38
Establishment media sources speak of the Iran's stubbornness in the face of
U.S. opposition to its nuclear enrichment, as if American leaders are entitled to
grant the Iranian government various rights in the international arena. A case in
point is a report from CAN, which explained that the Iranian government was
"given" a "last chance to halt uranium enrichment." The unspoken assumption
presented is that the U.S. and its European allies reserve the right to either au-
thorize, or prevent other countries from developing and retaining nuclear weap-
on~.~~ power to intervene in another country's affairs is reserved for the
The
U.S., even when media sources admit that evidence of an immediate threat is
"scant" at best, and that there has been extraordinary difficulty in collecting evi-
dence on the country's nuclear a~tivities.~' Outside the American establishment
press, vigilant critiques of the media's reporting on the Iranian "threat" warn
readers of the dangers of going to war with Iran. Scott Ritter argues in A1
Jazeera: "The American media today is sleepwalking towards an American war
with Iran with all of the incompetence and lack of integrity that is displayed
during a similar path trodden during the buildup to our current war with lraq.'"'