(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
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The Media Protest Too Much - The New York Times [1]
['Norman Solomon']
Date: 1991-05-24
Washington editors for 15 major American news organizations sent a letter to Defense Secretary Dick Cheney early this month complaining about press restrictions during the gulf war and criticizing the Pentagon for wielding "virtually total control" over coverage. Blaming the Pentagon for the quality of war reportage is convenient for journalists who may feel embarrassed that reporters more often resembled Government stenographers than news-gatherers.
In reality, albeit with some grumbling, the big media went along to get along with the warmakers. None of the letter-signers' news organizations joined in a lawsuit filed in January by some small media outlets and a few individual journalists to overturn the Pentagon rules. What's more, press complaints about Pentagon censorship have served as a lightning rod to draw attention away from the media's self-censorship.
No Federal agency forced the news media to rely on the narrow range of pro-war analysts that dominated the networks and news pages nor made correspondents mouth the sanitized military lingo that routinely obscured the war's human impact.
No Government edict called for ABC's Peter Jennings to exult in the "brilliance of laser-guided bombs" set off by the U.S. military, though he described an Iraqi missile as "a horrifying killer." Nor were Pentagon rules a factor when CBS journalist Charles Osgood called the initial bombing of Iraq "a marvel," or when his colleague Jim Stewart extolled "two days of almost picture-perfect assaults."
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/24/opinion/the-media-protest-too-much.html
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