Trip,Trap,Trip,Trap…
From The Independent comes this fascinating article analysing US media coverage of the attack on Lebanon, The writer, Andrew Gumbel, pulls no punches:
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As the conflict has gone on, the media interpretation of it has only hardened. Essentially, the line touted by cable news hosts and their correspondents – closely adhering to the line adopted by the Bush administration and its neoconservative supporters – is that Hizbollah is part of a giant anti-Israeli and anti-American terror network that also includes Hamas, al-Qa’ida, the governments of Syria and Iran, and the insurgents in Iraq. Little effort is made to distinguish between these groups, or explain what their goals might be. The conflict is presented as a straight fight between good and evil, in which US interests and Israeli interests intersect almost completely. Anyone who suggests otherwise is likely to be pounced on and ripped to shreds.
When John Dingell, a Democratic congressman from Michigan with a large Arab American population in his constituency, gave an interview suggesting it was wrong for the US to take sides instead of pushing for an end to violence, he was quickly – and loudly – accused of being a Hizbollah apologist. Newt Gingrich, the Republican former House speaker, accused him of failing to draw any moral distinction between Hizbollah and Israel. Rush Limbaugh, the popular conservative talk-show host, piled into him, as did the conservative newspaper The Washington Times. The Times was later forced to admit it had quoted Dingell out of context and reprinted his full words, including: ” I condemn Hizbollah, as does everyone else, for the violence.”
The hysteria has extended into the realm of domestic politics, especially since this is a congressional election year. Republican have sought to depict last week’s primary defeat of the Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, one of the loudest cheerleaders for the Iraq war, as some sort of wacko extremist anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli stand that risks undermining national security. Vice-President Dick Cheney said Lieberman’s defeat would encourage “al-Qa’ida types” to think they can break the will of Americans. The fact that the man who beat Lieberman, Ned Lamont, is an old-fashioned East Coast Wasp who was a registered Republican for much of his life is something Mr Cheney chose to overlook.
Part of the Republican strategy this year is to attack any media that either attacks them or has the temerity to report facts that contradict the official party line. Thus, when Reuters was forced to withdraw a photograph of Beirut under bombardment because one of its stringers had doctored the image to increase the black smoke, it was a chance to rip into the news agency over its efforts to be even-handed. In a typical riposte, Michelle Malkin denounced Reuters as “a news service that seems to have made its mark rubber-stamping pro-Hizbollah propaganda”.
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No doubt this article, having as it does the temerity to contradict the Republican party line, will be similarly attacked by the Right’s 21st century version of the flying picket, the flying paid trolls, who’re warming up their keyboards and synchronising their talking points even as we speak.
US Media, Dearborn Michigan, US Moslems. Fox-TV News, Reuters, Wingnutosphere
