Page 69 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

Weapons of Mass Diversion 59

The New York Times reported on the Downing Street memo a total of eight
times in the month and a half period between May first and June seventeenth,
2005. The stories in the New York Times and other mainstream papers, by and
large, did not appear as features, but rather on the back pages. Sometimes
editorials within the press were quite critical of the memos and the Bush
administration. Such was the case with a number of New York Times editorials.
Paul Krugman, an Op-Ed columnist for the paper, discussed the memo in an
editorial May 16, 2005, citing some of its key aspects. Krugman discussed how
the memo "demonstrated the limits of American power" and "emboldened our
potential enemies" as Iraq was "perceived as a soft target," rather than an
imminent threat to the United states.' On June 2, another Op-Ed writer for the
New York Times, Bob Herbert, claimed that the memo, "offered further
confirmation that the American public. . . [was] spoon-fed bogus information. . .
in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq," and "President Bush, as we know, wanted
to remove Saddam Hussein through military action. . . . Mr. Bush wanted war,
and he got it. Many thousands have died as a result.'' Herbert and Krugman's
columns, however, were but a few examples of critical coverage of Downing
Street, and they did not outweigh the lack of coverage seen throughout much of
the corporate press.
USA Today did not cover the story until thirty-eight days after it originally
broke in the Times of London. When the paper did address the memo, it was on
page eight, rather than on the cover. The story, printed on June 8, 2005, titled
"'Downing Street memo' gets fresh attention," stated that the media's coverage
in June represented "the most attention paid by the media in the USA so far."7
Even though the USA Today article went through the details of memo and
commented on the mostly silent mood of the mass media, it did not frame the
memo's contents as if they constituted a major political scandal. This likely had
much to do with the lack of a negative reaction amongst most American political
leaders, who did not perceive the memo as a major problem for the
administration. If political leaders did not view the issue as a major scandal, how
could "objective" reporters do so themselves when they are not supposed to
overtly place their own views into reports? This long-standing pattern is
standard in press systems that interpret objectivity as prohibiting reporters and
editors from actively denouncing or questioning American political leaders
within their news reports.
Between May 1, 2005 and July 3 1, 2005, the Washington Post mentioned
the original Downing Street Memo, references to it, and its actual contents, a
total of twenty-four times. The first mention of the memo was on May 6, in a
headline story called, "Blair Wins Historic Third Term; British Labor Party's
Victory Is Diminished by Fallout From War in lraq."* According to the New
York Times, the memo's contents, mentioned in the twelfth paragraph, "raised
serious doubts about the legality of the war ... suggesting Blair had agreed to
support the Bush administration's efforts to oust Hussein." In another story the
Washington Post printed on June 8 entitled "Seldom-Discussed Elephant Moves
into Public's View," also included a quote from Prime Minister Tony Blair
claiming that, "the facts were not being fixed, in any shape or form at Such