Page 55 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

All the News That's Fit to Omit 45

man Solomon, Ralph Nader, and numerous others, are regularly ignored, at-
tacked, or discredited.
One could accurately draw comparisons between the "liberals" and "con-
servatives" who dominate the mainstream press in that both groups subscribe to
the traditional doctrine that the U.S. is, by nature, committed to democratizing
the world through the promotion of military force and neoliberalization, and that
the current version of the "War on Terror" is the desirable means of combating
the international terrorist threat, although one may disagree on some of the
methods employed within this war. Of course, blunt news headlines and editori-
als such as "How the War on Terror Made the World a More Terrifying Place,"
"Iraq: A Country Drenched in Blood," "Only Negotiations with Iraq's Resis-
tance can Bring Peace," and "Only a True End to the Occupation can Bring
peace,"27--common enough in the reporting of mainstream media outlets like
the Independent and Guardian of London-would be unfathomable to print in
the United States, where editors and reporters take pride in "objectivity" and
"fair-minded" commentary.

Omission and Censorship

The omission and censorship of unconventional views has generally had a det-
rimental effect on the quality of mass media reporting. Omission and censorship
take many forms, including omission of much of the evidence that contradicted
the Bush administration's weapons charges and alleged connections between
Iraq and Al Qaeda. For the most part, the mainstream media refused to critique
the invasion of Iraq as illegal under international and national law. David Bar-
samian, founder of Alternative Radio argues that this is an important example of
censorship by omission: "The New York Times, this great liberal newspaper, had
seventy editorials between September 11, 2001 and the attack on Iraq, March
20, 2003. In not one of those editorials was the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Tri-
bunal, or any aspect of international law ever mentioned. . . . And so if you were
reading the New York Times over that period, during the buildup to the war, you
would not have had the sense that the United States was planning on doing
something that was a gross violation of international law, and national law for
that matter.''28
Media censorship, however, is not so simple that it works only from the top-
down, with editors and owners rejecting "inappropriate" news stories and firing
those reporters, analysts and pundits who do not accept government propaganda
as legitimate news sources. What is provided here is an institutional analysis,
not a conspiracy theory. For censorship to be truly effective, it requires that
journalists not only tolerate, but embrace the legitimacy and validity of conven-
tional doctrines that thrive within the media establishment and American elite
culture. Journalists are rewarded by either self-censoring or conforming to main-
stream political, economic, and social values. Most importantly, they are al-
lowed to keep their jobs, earn promotions, and climb the corporate ladder.