Serious Criticism Of The Media

I tend to tease and tease and then say something really snotty about the media, but this post is really serious and looks into a systemic failure of the media for decades.

The media is an excellent example of this. In the 1990s, the media led the charge to depose Bill Clinton. As Gene Lyons meticulously documented in Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater, the New York Times and Washington Post persistently, repeatedly, and egregiously misreported virtually every major aspect of the so-called “Whitewater scandal.” When that failed, and the Monica Lewinsky scandal emerged in its place, dozens of leading newspapers editorialized that Clinton should resign. Sixty percent of the American people disagreed, but they couldn’t get a word in edgewise-which is where, when and how MoveOn.org was founded.

In contrast, George W. Bush has not merely subverted the most central aspects of our constitutional order with his dictatorial theories of unchecked executive power, he has shredded the Magna Charta as well as the Constitution, and yet the media persists in lying that only the “loonie left” thinks that there’s anything amiss.

I think the savings and loan scandals had such an impact on Americans that the news had to be covered, but after doing research I was surprised out how much information failed to penetrate into the public conscience.

I can’t even get into too much detail in this post without bring up the Keating Five, two of whom have run for President. You can’t mention Iran Contra without mentioning Ghorbanifar, who is now involved with passing Iranian disinformation to the current Bush administration previous to the war in Iraq.

You can’t dig into BCCI without winding up in the nine eleven commission report.

None of this stuff should have been the sole domain of books. Hegemony appears to be the correct term to use, but it carries a neutral connotation and when we look at the corruption being reported today we have to wonder how much is not being reported on, and why not. How is the dying of the older media not a good thing?