Page 42 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

32 Chapter 1

mass media, despite the enormous resources allocated to selling the Bush plan,
is an important development indeed.
The dramatic shift in public opinion away from the pretexts provided by
political leaders and media suggests that the propaganda system is not always
effective in inculcating the American public. Charles Lindblom, the author of
the classic work Politics and Markets, argues "indoctrination of a population by
the most favored class is, of course, never a complete success."93 In the case of
Iraq, one can conclude that as the occupation has evolved, the American public
has gone from largely supportive in 2003 and 2004, to largely skeptical from
2005 on, despite continued calls from within the media that it was the United
States' responsibility, as a humanitarian power, to "stay the course" in Iraq.
The mainstream media's role in promoting pro-war views to the neglect of
substantive anti-war claims during the Iraq invasion and occupation should be
thoroughly examined. That most Americans uncritically accepted the arguments
that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and retained ties to Al Qaeda
(thereby lending their consent to the Bush administration based upon false pre-
tenses) speaks volumes about the failure of the mainstream press in its expected
task of providing the public with an accurate picture of what is going on in the
world today, and providing the public with a better balance between pro-war and
anti-war views. In an independent, professional media system, journalists would
be expected to treat official claims and propaganda with skepticism, rather than
wholeheartedly accepting such claims as incontestable fact. This has not been
the case in American reporting.

A Need for More Balanced Debate

While objectivity and complete balance are obviously impossible standards to
achieve in journalism, this does not mean that media outlets should not struggle
to incorporate the largest number of views possible in regards to the issues they
report. In their book, By Invitation Only: How the Media Limit Political Debate,
David Crouteau and William Hoynes elaborate upon an ideal expected of media
organizations: "The role of the news media should be to present the views of
diverse groups involved in or affected by any given issue. If citizens in a democ-
racy are to make informed decisions, they must have access to the range of opin-
ions available on potentially controversial matters."94
Fair reporting is not about achieving perfect balance, but rather about levels
of balance. Media systems as a whole can more or less balanced in their report-
ing in terms of incorporating a diverse number of views. The British print me-
dia, for example, has been far more willing than the American press to incorpo-
rate a wider range of ideological views in its reporting of the "War on Terror,"
as is explained in greater detail later in this book. When American media outlets
systematically neglect Progressive-Left perspectives while consistently incorpo-
rating mainstream and conservative points of view, what is left is an extreme
imbalance in war coverage. As Benjamin Page, author of Who Deliberates:
Mass Media in Modern Democracy contends: "Public deliberation may be