Our Corporate Media

Looking back on the last five years, I am amazed at our corporate media. Not amazed in a good way – but amazed that they have mainly done their jobs in such a poor manner, and done it that way for years. And yet many of them STILL have jobs! No matter how many times they get things wrong, they STILL have jobs!

In the lead up to the Iraq War, our “watchdog” media had the audacity, tenacity and veracity of Scooby-Doo! They functioned as outstanding stenographers without any historical memory or ability to reason. I cannot figure out if they are scared silly of our criminal elected officials, or just astonishingly lazy and suffering from amnesia. One outstanding example is how Mr. Bush claimed on four occasions over the last four years that Saddam never let the UN weapons inspectors back into Iraq, thereby forcing him to order the invasion of Iraq. Yet we all clearly know that UN weapons inspectors were in Iraq until just before the US invasion.

The claims at the time just before the invasion were that Saddam had WMDs, the US knew where they were – and yet – this administration and Mr. Rumsfeld would not tell the UN weapons inspectors where to look! And the US corporate press, and the US public, never seemed to notice! (By the way, this was not true for the foreign press.) And if you were one of those people who believed Saddam really did have WMDs, then you should count yourself as naive and very gullible. And you should realize that your naivety and gullibility got a great number of people killed – likely over one million in total. Of course, we will never know for sure just how many Iraqis have been killed by this invasion and occupation, but this administration does not care enough about the people there to count the dead. And some foolish people in this country, and in our corporate media, think that the Bush administration is bringing them ‘freedom and democracy’ in spite of the clear evidence to the contrary. I guess some people never get over being stupid and gullible and foolish, no matter how long they live.

After the invasion, the corporate media made a point of ignoring the Iraqi civilians and the suffering that they were going through. This left most Americans vastly un-informed, and likely ignorant of the fact that the rest of the world is very knowledgeable about how much the Iraqi people have suffered. Today, it is extremely dangerous for the corporate media to report on what is happening inside Iraq.

However, there are about two million Iraqi refugees now living outside of Iraq. They fled in fear of losing their lives and often took only the clothes on their backs with them. Many of them are suffering greatly, as the world outside the USA fully knows. It would be completely safe for our corporate media to cover this story. I predict that they never will cover it with even half the depth of the media outlets in Europe, if they cover it at all. I know I won’t be holding my breath waiting for the NYT, WaPo, ABCNNBCBS and Faux News to cover this story.

The corporate media (with a few exceptions, like McClatchy Bureau) is, in my opinion, deserving of none of my money or time or respect. I feel the same way about Americans who believed the lies about WMDs, who ignored what happened to the Iraqi people, and ignored how our intervention has ruined their lives, and who now ignore the Iraqi refugee crisis. They may be un-informed, naïve and gullible, but I think it is way past time for them to get over it and take some action to stop this genocide against the Iraqi people. I am not very hopeful that they will – or that our politicians will either. I don’t know how we can make this up to the Iraqi people, but I do know we have to try or never make a claim for being decent human beings again.

Is it possible for an entire society to be sociopathic? Is it possible for an entire country to ignore and dismiss the suffering their government and their military inflict on other people? I believe it is. And I believe this is what the USA does on a regular basis.