Bill Moyers made it back to PBS last night (25 April 2007) with a big bang: Bill Moyers' Journal returned with "Buying The War", a trenchant, troubling 90-minute piece about how the mainstream press "got it wrong" vis-a-vis the Bush Administration's selling of the Iraq war and blindly accepted the Bush view of things. Boy, did they ever!
We heard the familiar catchphrases from the administration: "greeted as liberators"; "smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud"; "aluminum tubes"; 'Saddam and al-Qaeda",etc. What we had not seen or heard before (at least in the electronic media) was how the mainstream press - including the bastions of the "liberal media", the New York Times and the Washington Post -- rolled over and played dead. Both editorially and through their reporters and columnists (Tom Friedman, Jim Hoagland, George Will, William Safire, Mary McGrory, et al.), these two media giants toed the line. CNN, CBS and their ilk were also right in there with them. The conservative press, led by the likes of Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, kept beating the drums.
Many were hesitant to criticize the administration because they feared the "patriotism police", who kept tabs on journalists. NBC yanked Phil Donahue's show primarily because he was perceived as being unfriendly towards the Bush Administration, which translated as "unpatriotic". Donahue claimed that he had been told to book two conservatives for every liberal. If anyone questioned the official line on the Iraq war, someone, perhaps a sponsor or advertiser, was likely to call their boss, or they would get pilloried by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, et al.
One group refused to knuckle under - the Knight Ridder folks. Led by diligent, tenacious reporters Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel, they dug into the "facts", by doing simple things like picking up the phone and calling people. Their yeoman efforts were mostly ignored by the mainstream media, for the simple reasons that they were on the "wrong side" and Knight Ridder did not have media outlets in Washington, DC, or New York City. We owe Knight Ridder a lot for keeping the spirit and practice of investigative reporting alive in the face of unrelenting criticism.
There were not many mea culpas in sight. About the only one who admitted he "got it wrong" was Peter Beinart of The New Republic.
Moyers also mentioned something very interesting at the end - why is it that the neocons who got it so wrong - guys like Kristol and Krauthammer - are still trotted out as "experts"?
You can read more, see the show, and query Landay and Strobel at:
www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/index-flash.html
Welcome back, Bill.
"If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch."-- Matthew 15:14
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