...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Tuesday, May 27, 2003
      ( 12:36 PM )
 
Wagging the Dog

Last week, the BBC aired a documentary about the "inconsistencies" in the story told to the US public about the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch. Amongst the initial reports heard in the US news media following her capture and rescue, we read that she'd been shot and stabbed, that she'd fought to the death defending her comrades, that the Iraqi doctors had neglected her and not treated her wounds, that she was kept in horrifying conditions, and that the rescuers faced strong opposition and had to attack the hospital where they'd heard from an informant she was being kept.

In fact, according to the BBC reporters who interviewed doctors and witnesses to the entire event, not only was she not shot or stabbed (verified by doctors in Germany where she was taken after her rescue), but the Iraqi doctors treated all of her wounds and kept her in stable and good condition in a clean hospital. In fact, they tried to return her only two days before the "rescue" but the ambulance she was in was turned away by gunfire. There were no iraqi troops in or around the hospital when the assault occurred, and in fact the doctors and nurses were hiding in the basement because they knew something was going to happen and they didn't want to get hurt. The entire rescue was filmed by the military and then edited before being released to the public.

In response to the BBC report, the Pentagon vehemently responded saying the entire thing was a pack of lies. But instead of refuting the claims of the witnesses and the reports from the BBC journalists, the Pentagon offered only that the US military never claimed they were under fire when they entered the hospital, and that "Speculative reports in the media were responsible for some of the misinformation, not Pentagon statements."

Then L.A. Times columnist Robert Scheer wrote a column about the BBC report - reminding readers about reports in the Washington Post and New York Times that had relied on "unnamed military sources" for items such as her multiple gunshot wounds.

The Pentagon got really mad then, and in a letter to the editor, Official Propagandist Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke told the L.A. Times they could eat poop and that none of the rescue was "manufactured." This despite the fact that Scheer didn't say the rescue itself was manfuactured but simply railed against the government's manipulation of the story for its own propaganda purposes.

Now Bill O'Reilly, Protector of all that is Nonsense, declares that SOMEONE IS LYING!!! He rants against Scheer, saying that the L.A. Times is such a Bush-hating paper that it would release a column such as this, and then he insists that the BBC reports can't be trusted because the BBC didn't support the war in the first place! Way to make an argument, Bill.

All in all, it is obvious now that the media, as the Pentagon's willing plaything, released to the hungry-for-good-patriotic-news American public stories that weren't altogether true in order to pump up American support for the war and to focus on our military's heroic efforts rather than our terrible mistakes in the takeover and occupation of Iraq. It doesn't really matter whether Pvt. Lynch's rescue was manufactured or not. In the end, the TV movie will be what people remember, and it certainly doesn't make good tv-movie stuff to not have lots of violence and intrigue and evil enemies to conquer in the rescue of a lone Private.

What matters most in the end is how our media are allowing themselves to be manipulated, or doing the manipulating themselves. Reporters, columnists, politicians and talking heads are crying far and wide about the scandalous nature of Jayson Blair's reporting for the New York Times... and yet no one seems to care that the headlines and articles in the Times and most other national papers from Pvt. Lynch's rescue to Whitewater all carried now-proven untruths that were never corrected in the public's mind.

How much longer are we going to allow ourselves to be manipulated like this? And an even greater question as June 2 approaches, are we going to allow fewer and fewer rich people to do the manipulating? This is the sign of the decline of a democracy, when even the people who have the ultimate power - the voting public -- refuse to be concerned about the state's coercive and controlling actions when it comes to the protected "free" press. Another cog in the wheel that's going to run over freedom of expression and dissent in this country sooner than we expect....

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