Well, so much for the media war...

It's official: we've lost the war for control over the mainstream media. While we wanted a honest news service (after all, the best news for liberalism is truth), the right wing has beat us into subduing the largest source of public information in history. Case in point, the newest AP article claiming the Army Reserve is "broken:"

WASHINGTON - The Army Reserve, whose part-time soldiers serve in combat and support roles in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites), is so hampered by misguided Army policies and practices that it is "rapidly degenerating into a 'broken' force," the Reserve's most senior general says.

Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, chief of the Army Reserve, wrote in an internal memorandum to the Army's top uniformed officer that the Reserve has reached the point of being unable to fulfill its missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and to regenerate its forces for future missions.

The Army Reserve has about 200,000 soldiers, nearly 52,000 of them on active duty for the war on terrorism, mainly in Iraq.

emphasis mine.

When the mainstream media can shamelessly call the military operation in Iraq a part of the "war on terrorism" (another right-wing creation), we have completely and utterly lost our fight for rational objectivity in the media. I don't need to explain that Iraq has absolutely nothing to do with our struggle against terrorism; any person who reads the newspaper and is subsequently aware of the Dulfer report, the 9/11 commission report, and the countless other pieces of evidence proving the nonexistence of a link between the 9/11 terrorists and Iraq should realize that. But somehow our nation's mainstream media has gone along with the neocons' propaganda. Regardless, we'll continue to lose until we can restore any semblance of rational thought to the public conscience.

•  On NPR this morning..

  ..on one of the shows I still consider to be a straight shooter (The Connection. www.theconnection.org) a caller phoned to suggest that the media has given, from day one of the Iraq war, a rather severe tilt by calling those fighting the US within Iraq (who are now fighting not just them but Iraqis) 'insurgents', the caller asked why they weren't (at least until the end of the US's running the show) 'defenders'.  The guest said that they had struggled long and hard over what to call them, and finally settled (I guess as a whole?) on 'insurgents', to call them 'defenders' or something like that would put too positive a spin on them (not that 'insurgents' has any kind of bias, no..)

  It's just another cog in the misinformation machine, producing frame after faulty frame.

  by Stymnus on Wed Jan 05, 2005 at 07:34:50 PM PDT

  •  That's an Improvement

    Remember in the early days of the Iraqi occupation, when the opposition was universally referred to as "terrorists"?

    Back in the days of Vietnam, we never did label the enemy properly.  To do so would be to admit our imperialist designs, which no mainstream news source (in this country, at least) is about to do.

    by Dallasdoc on Wed Jan 05, 2005 at 11:10:18 PM PDT

•  Link to the AP article please?

  Actually the scary part of this story is that the commander of the US Army Reserve regards his command as broken.

  This ties into Deep Dark's grim little essay The Side Door to Iraq from a few days ago.

  We are sooooo fucked.....

  by jakethomson on Wed Jan 05, 2005 at 07:44:08 PM PDT

  •  It was on Drudge a while back

    but he took it down. Look for it in the diaries a few back.

    by ARingMD2B on Wed Jan 05, 2005 at 08:49:47 PM PDT

•  We Need Our Own Media

  It needs to be professional, and it needs to start now. We need Air America times 100.

  by Reino on Wed Jan 05, 2005 at 07:47:36 PM PDT

  •  If you paid them

    they would come.  But a lot of progressive media outlets like Pacifica Radio don't have the money to pay decent salaries.  Freelancers and independent producers, who do a lot of progressive work for the love of it, are also paid shit across most of the industry.  And wire reporters, like the one above, are overworked and underpaid too.  The person who wrote that wasn't a right wing zombie, they were just being a zombie, putting down the first phrase that came to their deadline-addled mind.

    by bartona on Wed Jan 05, 2005 at 08:12:48 PM PDT

•  The media died

  in 1997-99 with the Clinton fiasco. They lauched after him like a wild pack of dogs....sent by the Rethug masters......Corporate Media.

  When Gore ran you could tell they were lazy, unattached, disinterested and out to place Bush in power by giving him a pass all during 1999-2000.

  The rest is history and we have just caught up to the fact that by the late 1990's we had lost any true objective media. Hence, now all they do is repeat what they are told. Told to them by the RNC and Bushco. Look at how they are controlling the debate, dialog and langague......all through the GOP prism.

  The Fourth Estate passed long ago.......we are on our own now!!

  by alnc on Wed Jan 05, 2005 at 09:01:36 PM PDT