Corporate Media: the Playthings of Power

Rarely are we afforded the opportunity to see cataloged in all of its craven glory the appalling performance of the corporate media during the lead up to the US/UK (USuk) assault on Iraq. Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) has just completed a devastating revue of the mainstream media’s reporting in the months leading up to, during, and immediately following the USuk invasion. FAIR covers reporting during the critical period from 1 September 2002 thru 31 May 2003, a time when most Americans were skeptical of the Team Bush rationale for war without UN sanction, yet still vulnerable to the (false) implications of a Saddam/Al Qaeda link peddled to media lapdogs by senior Bush officials.

At just the time when the American public (to say nothing of soon-to-be-slaughtered Iraqis) needed the Fourth Estate to subject the Team Bush assertions (WMD, Iraqi connivance in the 9/11 attacks) to critical analysis, the highly credulous media uncritically reported the justifications for war from official sources—with the near total exclusion of articulate anti-war voices. In short, what the public needed were actual journalists, however, what it got instead were stenographers.