Page 36 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

Chapter 1

Media Propaganda in the "War on Terror":
American and World Opinion at Crossroads

The invasion of Iraq exposed deep fissures between American and world opin-
ion, particularly in regards to crucial issues such as Iraq's alleged weapons of
mass destruction and purported ties to A1 Qaeda, and the U.S. role as global lib-
erator. As late as March of 2005,56 percent of Americans still believed that Iraq
possessed weapons of mass destruction before the start of the U.S. invasion,
despite strong evidence that Iraq disarmed years earlier. Six in ten Americans
polled in 2005 also indicated that they thought Iraq provided support to A1
Qaeda, despite the fact that no conclusive evidence of a link was presented by
the Bush administration or the media outside of mere c~njecture.~' Perhaps most
disturbing of all though was the fallacious assumption amongst 54 percent of
those questioned that most Iraqis supported the U.S. occupation of ~ra~?~
The mainstream media played a vital role in manipulating the American
public in favor of going to war with Iraq, especially when considering the effec-
tiveness of media outlets in indoctrinating the public with claims of Iraqi WMD
and ties to A1 Qaeda. Such justifications for war did not spontaneously material-
ize from no place, or without reason in the minds of hundreds of millions of
Americans; rather, these justifications originated from a few key sources:
namely the Bush administration, prominent political figures (Democrats and
Republicans) and the mainstream media, among other major political actors.
Without media, the Bush administration had no mass venue through which
to spread its pro-war messages, as it needed a receptive, largely uncritical audi-
ence amongst the corporate media's owners, editors, and reporters. In effect, the
media became the conduit for the transmission of the government's pro-war
platform, as it transformed itself into a messenger for the Bush administration's
portrayals of an imminent Iraqi threat. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!
summarizes the state of media complicity as follows: "When George Bush said
there were Weapons of Mass Destruction [in Iraq], he could not have done it
alone. . .he needed an international apparatus to launder what he said, or to put
the stamp of approval on it, and he had it in the U.S. media. More powerful than
any bomb or missile, the Pentagon has deployed the U.S. media."77
The power of the American media in fostering pro-war attitudes had drastic
consequences when reflecting upon the gulf between American public opinion,
which was generally pro-war from 2002-2004, and world opinion, which was
often more skeptical of the motives and actions of the Bush administration dur-
ing that same period. The differences in world opinion and American opinion
were pronounced in terms of support for, and opposition to, the Bush admini-
stration's foreign policy. While 86 percent of Americans polled at the outset of
the Iraq war claimed "disarmament of Iraq" as a main motivation for supporting
the invasion:' international audiences were ofien reacting with more suspicion
to U.S. WMD claims. By April 2003, 75 percent of Americans were still confi-
dent that the U.S. would uncover large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruc-
tion in post-Saddam ~ra~?~