I still recall the first big story I wrote as a journalist, in 1983, because I had moved to Washington with fantasies of being an investigative reporter and making a difference. But I was given a challenge: I was asked to "report" on a story while being told what to write at the same time. And the story back then was that Medicare was going broke. Don't ask for the numbers, it just was. So, needing to pay the rent, I did what most journalists do, and forgot about fact-finding so I could stay on message. Whatever reporting I managed to do was molded to fit.
Many other journalists did the same thing, because there were choruses of stories pronouncing something that wasn't true but that would help the Reagan administration start dismantling publicly funded health care. We didn't think of ourselves as resembling Pravda writers from the 1960s.
The reporting on Israel's attacks on Lebanon and Gaza strikes me as very similar. There is something very trumped-up-from-nowhere about this whole affair, and the media are dutifully reporting it in lockstep.
I would guess it's because they aren't asking any questions. They're just staying on message: "Israel has a right to defend herself."
Even the slightest factual context or real reporting shreds that message. For some facts and analysis on the reality of what one small country with US backing is doing, and what more permanent state of warfare it could be waltzing us into, see
http://www.ifamericansknew.org
http://www.counterpunch.com/...
http://www.democracynow.org/...
Because Medicare wasn't going broke, then or now, and we should not defend countries when they are committing war crimes.