?Sir, if I got my news from the newspapers also, I?d be pretty depressed as
well.? ? Captain Sherman Powell to Matt Lauer, Today, 8/17/05
If you were to believe what you see in the mass media, Iraq has become a
horrendous quagmire, with soldiers being killed almost on a daily basis, for
what turns out to have been a lie about weapons of mass destruction. To top it
off, after having nothing to do with terrorism, Iraq has now become a training ground
for al-Qaeda. But maybe not. The media has gotten things wrong before. Just
look at Dan Rather?s story about the memos concerning President Bush?s service
in the Texas Air National Guard, or how the battlefield victory of the 1968 Tet
Offensive was turned into a defeat with a few words from Walter Cronkite.
What is happening in Iraq is a failure by the media to give the American
people relevant information. This has probably colored public opinion on the
liberation of Iraq. The media?s failure has come in two areas. First, it has
failed to provide the news in context, often focusing on negatives. Second, it
has not brought evidence to the American people that would place the initial
decision to go in into context. Both of these failures have occurred often
enough that one cannot be blamed for wondering if a pattern of deception, by
omission, is not occurring.
The term ?deception by omission? might sound harsh, but it is accurate.
Deception does not need the active misrepresentation of facts, it can occur
when someone fails to reveal something relevant to the situation ? particularly
when the people leaving out some of the facts are advocating a specific course
of action (such as withdrawal
from Iraq... ).
For instance, the media has often failed to report many of the successes.
This was a major complaint voiced by at least two... columnists...
who have served in Iraq. In the first case, the complaint is about the lack of
good news ( schools opened..., rehabilitation of
infrastruct..., and other ...news... items...
that don?t have the suddenness and shock value of a car bombing). The second
complaint is that the ?police blotter? coverage often obscures the ?big
picture? of what is going on. This is quite important as well. The insurgents
offer little more beyond murder..., mayhem...,
and terror....
The second, and more serious matter is the fact that the media has flat-out
omitted several pieces of information that tend to back up the decision to go
to war and put to rest claims that President Bush lied. Stephen
F. Hayes... of The Weekly Standard
has documented...
the connections between Saddam?s regime and al-Qaeda. This has been a
constantly repeated pattern.
In April,
2003..., a pair of journalists di
