[Dialogue] {Spam?}Bill Moyers' "Buying the War" Exposes the Media's Failure to do Their Job.

[Harry Wainwright]

Published on Tuesday, April 24, 2007 by Denver Post
<http://test.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_5733327>  

Bill Moyers' "Buying the War" Exposes the Media's Failure to do Their Job.

by Joanne Ostrow

In some quarters, this week is set aside as "turn off your TV week." Beyond
the fact that it's a silly enterprise - Pick and choose, people! Pick and
choose! - there is one important offering on the nonfiction front that
should not be missed.
<http://www.commondreams.org/archive/wp-content/photos/0424_06.jpg> 

If we could retroactively pull the plug, say during the saturation coverage
of the Anna Nicole Smith saga, that might have been a good week to skip the
tube.

But - do-gooders take note - this week a devastating 90-minute documentary
should be required viewing. This is the kind of work television can do
brilliantly when given time and resources and the talents of a questioner
like Bill Moyers.

A point-by-point explanation of how the media failed the public en route to
the war in Iraq is carefully assembled and patiently related Wednesday by
Moyers on PBS.

"Bill Moyers Journal," at 8 p.m. Wednesday on KRMA-Channel 6, presents
"Buying
<http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/2007/04/preview_buying_the_war.html>
the War," an eye-opening view of how the mainstream press got things exactly
wrong in the ramp-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. (local listings
<http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/about/airdates.html> here)

The passing of unchecked information, the fear of appearing unpatriotic in
the wake of 9/11, the readiness to join the drumbeat of misinformation about
weapons of mass destruction and the willingness of the rest of the media to
follow The New York Times - all contributed to the media buying in and
failing to help readers and viewers separate fact from propaganda.

Dan Rather, formerly of CBS, tells Moyers, "I don't think there is any
excuse for my performance and the performance of the press in general in the
roll-up to the war. Overall . there's no question that we didn't do a good
job."

Tim Russert of NBC's "Meet the Press" has a tougher time admitting
complicity, or allowing that his influential program was used by the
administration. Russert says he simply followed the lead of the front-page
story of The New York Times. Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice went on the Sunday-morning shows and cited the
infamous "smoking gun as mushroom cloud" story, which they gave the Times.

Bob Simon of CBS's "60 Minutes" sums up that performance: "Remarkable. You
leak a story, and then you quote the story."

As in so many phases of the administration's marketing of the war, the media
simply stood by.

Walter Isaacson, former president of CNN, says, "Especially right after
9/11. Especially when the war in Afghanistan is going on. There was a real
sense that you don't get that critical of a government that's leading us in
war time."

A particularly embarrassing news conference with President Bush two weeks
before he ordered the country to war demonstrates the passive state of the
press at the time.

"At least a dozen times during this press conference he will invoke 9/11 and
Al-Qaeda to justify a pre-emptive attack on a country that has not attacked
America," Moyers narrates.

The president calls on reporters designated by his staff. The questions are
friendly to the point of puffy. The press corps wouldn't awaken until after
Hurricane Katrina. They knew the war was going to happen, so they got out of
the way.

The work of an investigative team from Knight Ridder newspapers (acquired by
The McClatchy Co. last year) is singled out as a rare example of healthy,
skeptical reporting. Yet while almost all the Bush claims about WMD would
prove to be false, the story citing "lack of hard evidence of Iraqi weapons"
got little play.

Among the cheerleaders for the war who refused to talk to Moyers for this
report are (no surprises here) columnist Thomas Friedman of The New York
Times, conservative pundit William Kristol of The Weekly Standard, president
of Fox News and former Nixon and Reagan strategist Roger Ailes, Washington
Post columnist and Fox news commentator Charles Krauthammer, New York Times
reporter Judith Miller, and Times political columnist William Safire.

It's easy to campaign in favor of turning off the television. The bumper
sticker "Kill your TV" is ever popular. But if more of us were better
informed, as this documentary makes painfully clear, the world outside the
box would be a better place.

Members of the media will be parsing this historic lapse for years to come,
trying to explain how the watchdogs dozed.

Journalism students everywhere should watch and take notes.

Copyright 2007 The Denver Post

  _____  

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org 

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/24/730/

 

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