U.S. Media: A Conveyor Belt for Government Lies
by Amy Goodman and David Goodman, Seattle Times
Our media have become an echo chamber for those in power
George
Bush must have been delighted to learn from a [March/April 2005]
Washington Post-ABC News poll that 56 percent of Americans still
[thought] Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the start of the
war, while six in 10 said they believe[d] Iraq provided direct support
to the al-Qaida terrorist network — notions that have long since been
thoroughly debunked by everyone from the U.S. Senate Intelligence
Committee to both of Bush's handpicked weapons inspectors, Charles
Duelfer and David Kay.
Americans
believe these lies not because they are stupid, but because they are
good media consumers. Our media have become an echo chamber for those
in power. Rather than challenge the fraudulent claims of the Bush
administration, we've had a media acting as a conveyor belt for the
government's lies.
As the
Pentagon has learned, deploying the American media is more powerful
than any bomb. The explosive effect is amplified as a few pro-war,
pro-government media moguls consolidate their grip over the majority of
news outlets. Media monopoly and militarism go hand in hand.
When it
comes to issues of war and peace, the results of having a compliant
media are as deadly to our democracy as they are to our soldiers. Why
do the corporate media cheerlead for war? One answer lies in the
corporations themselves — the ones that own the major news outlets.
At the
time of the first Persian Gulf War, CBS was owned by Westinghouse and
NBC by General Electric. Two of the major nuclear weapons manufacturers
owned two of the major networks. Westinghouse and GE made most of the
parts for many of the weapons in the Persian Gulf War. It was no
surprise, then, that much of the coverage on those networks looked like
a military hardware show.
(Click here to read the complete article.)
Amy
Goodman, host of the award-winning radio and TV news show “Democracy
Now!,” and her brother David Goodman, a contributing writer for Mother
Jones, are authors of “The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them,” which was recently released in paperback by Hyperion.
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