Current Events for Dummies part 2

By Bernard Weiner,The Crisis Papers

"FIXING" INTELLIGENCE AROUND POLICY

Q. Blair and Bush made a secret deal in mid-2002 to attack Iraq the following year and to use the interim period in which to "fix" the "intelligence and facts" around that policy; the secret memo surfaced just recently in the Times of London. But virtually none of the major American media reported in a timely way on this memo substantiating that Bush and Blair lied through their teeth in taking our respective countries to war. Why the U.S. media reticence?

A. You must be the same dim bulb who asked about pensions, right? The corporate American media, especially TV and cable but also the major newspapers, are and long have been in lockstep with the Bush Administration: they do what they can to hype the Bush spin and to keep embarrassing stories out of the public eye, or they delay running anything them until the interest dies down; whether this is because the media are ideologically in bed with Bush & Co. or because they are afraid of Roveian retribution doesn't matter, since the result is the same.

But sometimes a story is simply too important to be ignored totally, and even the corporate media feel obliged to run something. So the UK memo story is now starting to appear in a few spots, two weeks late and usually buried somewhere by the editors; we shall see if the story, and its implications, break through into the mass-media, especially on TV, in a major way. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

In general, as you no doubt have figured out, in order to learn what's really going on in the news requires you to seek out journalistic sources less controlled, which means smaller publications, independent radio networks, a few liberal talk-show radio hosts, and, especially, progressive writers on the Internet.