Why The Press Failed



AlterNet.org



The
Bush administration's media strategy was simple: Treat the press as a
special interest group and the American public as a market of
consumers. It almost worked.



When, on
May 26, 2004, the editors of the New York Times published a mea culpa
for the paper's one-sided reporting on weapons of mass destruction and
the Iraq war, they admitted to “a number of instances of coverage that
was not as rigorous as it should have been.” They also commented that
they had since come to “wish we had been more aggressive in
re-examining claims” made by the Bush Administration. But we are still
left to wonder why the Times, like many other major media outlets in
this country, was so lacking in skepticism toward administration
rationales for war? How could such a poorly thought through policy,
based on spurious exile intelligence sources, have been so blithely
accepted, even embraced, by so many members of the media? In short,
what happened to the press's vaunted role, so carefully spelled out by
the Founding Fathers, as a skeptical “watchdog” over government?



There's
nothing like seeing a well-oiled machine clank to a halt to help you
spot problems.  



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