Media Tall Tales For The Next War

The Sept. 25 edition of Time magazine illustrates how the US newsmedia are gearing up for a military attack on Iran. The headline over thecover-story interview with Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is "ADate With a Dangerous Mind." The big-type subhead calls him "the manwhose swagger is stirring fears of war with the US ," and the secondparagraph concludes: "Though pictures of the Iranian president often showhim flashing a peace sign, his actions could well be leading the world closer towar."

When the USA's biggest newsweekly devotes five pages to scoping out a US airwar against Iran, as Time did in the same issue, it's yet another signthat the wheels of our nation's war-spin machine are turning faster toward yetanother unprovoked attack on another country.

Ahmadinejad has risen to the top of Washington's—and American media's—enemieslist. Within the last 20 years, that list has included Manuel Noriega, SaddamHussein and Slobodan Milosevic, with each subjected to extensive vilificationbefore the Pentagon launched a large-scale military attack.

Whenever the president of the United States decides to initiate or intensifya media blitz against a foreign leader, mainstream US  news outlets havedependably stepped up the decibels and hysteria. But the administration can alsocall off the dogs of war by going silent about the evils of some foreign tyrant.

Take Libya's dictator, for instance. For more than a third of a century, Col.Muammar al-Qaddafi has been a despot whose overall record of repression makesNoriega or Milosevic seem relatively tolerant of domestic political foes. Butever since Qaddafi made a deal with the Bush administration in December 2003,the silence out of Washington about Qaddafi's evilness has been notable.

When Qaddafi publicly celebrated the 37th anniversary of his dictatorship afew weeks ago, he declared in a speech on state television: "Our enemieshave been crushed inside Libya, and you have to be ready to kill them if theyemerge anew." The New York Times noted that Qaddafi's regime"criminalizes the creation of opposition parties."

Today, while the human rights situation in Iran is reprehensible, the ongoingcircumstances are far worse under many governments favored by Washington. Hereat home, media outlets should be untangling double standards instead ofcontributing to them. But so many reporters and pundits have internalizedWashington's geopolitical agendas that the mainline institutions of journalismcontinue to rot from within. That the rot goes largely unnoticed is testimony tohow Orwellian "doublethink" has been normalized.

These are not issues of professionalism any more than concerns about publichealth are issues of medicine. The news media should be early warning systemsthat inform us before current events become unchangeable history.

But when the media system undermines the free flow of information andprevents wide-ranging debate, what happens is a parody of democracy. That's whatoccurred four years ago during the media buildup for the invasion of Iraq.

Now, warning signs are profuse: The Bush administration has Iran in thePentagon's sights. And the drive toward war, fueled by double standards aboutnuclear development and human rights, is getting a big boost from US  mediacoverage that portrays the president as reluctant to launch an attack on Iran.

Time magazine reports that "from the State Department to theWhite House to the highest reaches of the military command, there is a growingsense that a showdown with Iran ... may be impossible to avoid."

The same kind of media spin—assuming a sincere Bush desire to avoid war—wasprofuse in the months before the invasion of Iraq. The more that news outletstell such fairy tales, the more they become part of the war machinery.

The paperback edition of Norman Solomon's latest book, WarMade Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, waspublished this summer. Courtesy, Znet