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Why the Mainstream Media Got It Wrong on Iraq, and Why the ‘Why’ Is Invisible in the Media
Press Action
Thursday, September 23, 2004
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/yates09232004/

By Larry Yates

Michael Getler, ombudsman of the Washington Post, exemplifies the fatal flaw of mainstream journalism in his Sept. 19 column on Iraq. The media fell down on critiquing the Administration, he admits, but so did Congress and so did the Democratic leadership. Therefore, from his point or view, there was nothing the media could do but get it wrong.

In fact, all of these groups—the majority of Congress, the mainstream corporate media, and the foreign policy elite—are recognizably part of a small and incestuous group that has made bad choices (even from its own perspective) on the issues for decades, and for the most transparent reasons of narrow self-interest.

This is a fairly obvious fact that future historians will take for granted. It will also be obvious in the future to everyone, as it is to anyone seeking alternatives now, that there is a large body of thought with a solid critique of that small and incestuous group, and that most of the human race, probably including a majority of people in the U.S., subscribe to it. In other words, it is absurdly easy to find critics of the accepted wisdom that have good track records and logical arguments—yet the media ignores them.

A recent domestic issue—deregulation of energy—provides a clear picture of how the media and its partners work. Not long ago, there was a broad bipartisan consensus among mainstream policymakers and media that deregulation of energy was a wonderful idea—good for the consumer and everyone else, and historically inevitable. However, it was not hard for a disinterested person to trace that broad sentiment to a few corporations willing to spend money and hire public relations experts, economists, etc. At the forefront of this process, of course, was a company with a business model that was widely praised for going beyond conventional thinking—Enron. And of course, as everyone now understands, Enron was essentially a scam, driven by gross and short-sighted self-interest.

There has never been an explicit acknowledgment that the “big thinkers” of the U.S. mainstream were essentially either bribed or scammed by Enron and its ilk. (Though we do not today hear the same cheerleading for energy deregulation.) To admit what clearly happened would violate the fundamental tenet of mainstream corporate journalism—that the received wisdom of the inner circles is the only source of truth that can be seriously propagated in their media. The rather elementary idea that the consensus of U.S. elite opinion can be manipulated, or bought, or even be collectively totally wrong, and that finding truth requires seeking alternative perspectives, is beyond the pale.

When it comes to foreign policy, of course, the elite has consistently made choices that have led to failures, for the simple reason that it is constantly seeking a short-term advantage for U.S. interests, and convincing itself, if no-one else, that that short term interest embodies some kind of long-term principle. From Vietnam to general support for tyrants during the Cold War to Iraq today, the elite has consistently made bad choices. Its critics—in the peace movement, and among global opinion-makers, though not perfect or unanimous, have consistently been much closer to right. Let us remember that only the U.S. elite supported the trifecta of Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and the apartheid regime of South Africa. Even on the Soviet Union, despite the “Reagan won the Cold War” claims, the evidence is that grassroots labor and democracy activism, not military might, was the determining factor there.

Could the media find voices that gave an alternative point of view? Of course. In the case of Iraq, it was in fact difficult to find voices that agreed with the United States policy. Nations like Turkey and Mexico shook off their habits of going along with the United States. Tens of millions of ordinary citizens took a lot of time from their lives to protest. Individuals and groups that have consistently been proven correct, such as Noam Chomsky or the Congressional Black Caucus, made their opposition clear. The problem was not that there was no alternative opinion or analysis. The problem was that to grasp what that alternative opinion was saying, the mainstream corporate media would have had to violate two key principles it operates under:

1) The mainstream media would have had to admit the possibility of collective error pretty much throughout the extremely narrow spectrum of opinion it ordinarily treats as the entire acceptable universe of opinion. The media would have had to reveal that that spectrum could be pretty much totally and unanimously misled by narrow self-interest, and/or stampeded by a determined group of so-called “experts.” (The Wolfowitzes and McNamaras of this world, after all, are by any reasonable standard amateurs in foreign policy.)

2) The mainstream media would have had to validate perspectives from outside the elite U.S. corporate mainstream as having equal or greater value than those they customarily rely on.

The corporate media can no more violate these principles than the pharmaceutical industry can suddenly announce that fresh air, exercise, and wild herbal remedies growing free in your front yard are the key to health. This becomes clear if we understand that neither news nor entertainment is the primary business of the media—that the corporate media is primarily in business to disseminate propaganda for the existing system. If the corporate media were to make evident—even once—that the average person has as great a capacity to figure out what is going on as our “leaders,” and that in most cases the best place to go to understand an issue is to independent critical thinkers, they would be out of business.

This might seem like too strong a statement. But, despite all the hand-wringing, nobody sees the mainstream media as really threatened by its gross misfeasance on Enron, Iraq, and dozens of similar issues. Clearly, it does not really matter to them that they have totally failed get the facts right in these situations—because getting the facts right is not “Job One” for them. Nor does this media machinery pander to public opinion, or to some kind of liberal or conservative ideology.

The media is, quite simply, the tool of the small group of wealthy and selfish people that own it, and it must project the orthodoxy that that small group espouses. (This is easy to understand and accept when we look at a small town newspaper. But the ownership of the major media in this country is by now in the hands of a group not much larger or more diverse than the Chamber of Commerce of a one-industry town.)

For these reasons, neither this letter, nor the analysis that informs it, will ever be treated seriously by the Washington Post as currently constituted. That is why the corporate media must be seen, and constantly pressured, not as some kind of mystically objective and independent collection of enterprises that could do right if we only convinced them, but as an integral component of the machinery that has hijacked both our democracy and the global economy for the most short-sighted and immoral reasons. The Washington Post is no more separate from the Pentagon than Pravda was from the Kremlin. And, like Pravda and the Kremlin, both the Post and the Pentagon are not only fallible but—somewhat in the short run and totally in the long run—vulnerable to democratic struggle.

*This piece is reprinted with permission of Larry Yates. He has submitted it as a letter to the editor of the Washington Post.

Larry Yates has been an organizer and activist since the late sixties. He lives in Maurertown, Va. For more of his writings, visit www.shentel.net/sjc/opinions.htm.