The media’s coverage of the war in Iraq has reached a new
dimension: not only are broadcast media conveying images of Baghdad
around the clock, reporters are riding along with soldiers on the
front lines, placing their lives at high risk for the sake of
gathering information faster than a competing news agency.
Though the extent to which the media is covering the war,
visually or otherwise, may seem excessive to some, the necessity of
doing so is unquestionable. The public needs to see all sides of
war in order to have a wholistic conception of it. It is the
media’s job to expose the damage of war, however gruesome or
disturbing it may be, because it is the truth; it is the
media’s job to make sure the public knows as much as can be
known, not to shelter it from details.
Sadly, the coverage of the war in Iraq, especially in the
broadcast media thus far has been especially biased and devoid of
credibility. It has become a joke.
The original motive behind the war with Iraq was to disarm
Saddam Hussein. But since the war began, the Bush administration
has kept its mouth shut about Iraq’s weapons of mass
destruction, twisting the war’s goals to include the
“liberation” of the Iraqi people, and not just
disarmament. Instead of naming the war “Operation Disarm
Iraq,” Bush coined the more pleasant, highly patriotic
“Operation Iraqi Freedom” phrase instead. Ever since,
the media has followed Bush like a poodle on a leash, serving as
his mouthpiece.
Instead of saying they are covering the “war in
Iraq” or the “conflict in Iraq,” many reporters
have stared into the cameras, saying they are covering
“Iraq’s liberation.” It’s one thing for the
media to get information from the Bush administration and U.S.
military personnel, but it’s called bias when the media uses
Bush’s words verbatim to “objectively” cover the
war.
Buying into Bush’s liberation-speak has forced the media
into an unintelligent stupor. Why is no one pressing Bush to
produce proof that the “evidence” of weapons
development that started this war actually exists? No such weapons
have been discovered since the war started.
The media must be critical and question the Bush administration
just as willingly as they echo its rhetoric, not because the media
is anti-Bush but because the media is the only tool the public has
to access information from its leadership. If the media is
complacent, it fails in its purpose: it resembles the state-run
media in communist and totalitarian states, where the current
regime decides what it wants the public to know.
There’s only one reason the war in Iraq is going on: the
fear of terrorism inspired by Sept. 11, 2001. If those attacks had
not happened, the United States would not be
“liberating” the Iraqi people from Hussein. If
President Bush is straying from his original goal to disarm Iraq,
to not yielding until a regime change occurs, the national media
need to ask the administration these questions, because ordinary
people who want to know, cannot.
Patriotism can be blinding; the one resource people should be
able to count on for objective, true information is the media.
Unfortunately, the national American media has become more of a
public relations arm for the president than a resource for the
public.