The Road to Awe When President Bites Watchdog The Arm's Length Principle All Quiet on the Home Front The Prison, the General and the Flexible Broadcaster Concentrating on Bias Mea Pulpa Reintroducing the Skeptic's Test
Answers a key question on the lips of many Americans as violence in Iraq continues and report after report reveals that President Bush's reasons for leading Americans to war were not backed by solid evidence: Why weren't the media more skeptical during the rush to war?
David Dadge is Editor of the International Press Institute in Vienna and author of Casualty of War: The Bush Administration's Assault on a Free Press (2004).
Also author of Casualty of War: The Bush Administration's Assault
on a Free Press (CH, Sep'02, 41-0601), Dadge (International Press
Institute, Vienna) here faults US media for failure to report the
facts of the Iraq war. Supporting his argument with an imposing
array of data, the author cites as mitigating reasons for this
inept performance jingoistic patriotism, self-censorship, subtle
pressures from the Bush administration, and an inability to confirm
intelligence information. The bottom line: the Fourth Estate failed
in its fundamental role to inform the American people fully and
fairly of the facts of the nation's venture into invasion and war.
Dadge points out that the press has been derelict before--in the
Spanish-American War, WW I, and Korea--but he argues that never
before has an administration managed to control news on such a
scale. The efforts of the Bush ideologues were abetted by the press
itself, which was muted by self-inflicted credibility problems and
timidity to voice dissent and criticism. The author's prescription
for improvement: the media must adopt a new skepticism for
government and return to journalism's basic tenets, independence
and accountability. Otherwise, a growing public apathy will further
erode First Amendment rights in the US. Highly recommended.
Upper-division undergraduates and above.
*Choice*
It is perhaps a truism to note that the Bush administration's
greatest domestic ally in his effort to invade Iraq was the US
media, which consistently failed to question even the most
outrageous and, often, demonstrably false assertions and
insinuations about the danger posed by Saddam Hussein coming from
administration figures and their congressional supporters. In
addition to documenting this miserable performance, Dadge explores
some of the explanations for the media's behavior, including media
corporate consolidation, government pressure, and patriotic
self-censorship stemming from the 9-11 attacks. In the end, he
somewhat surprisingly concludes that the media is capable of
reforming itself, so long as it develops a new skepticism towards
government and supports editorial independence.
*Reference & Research Book News*
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