I'll come back later and add hyperlinks to appropriate diaries in here relating to the issue of the AWOL/ complicitous media in this country and the lies told in support of invading and occupying Iraq. Suffice it to say I believe the hypothesis of at least inattentiveness is now widely recognized as supported by all available evidence.
My starting point diary here is the remarkable rant of 'clammyc'.
If you follow this and related diaries, you might note a cadre of apologists for the media, posters whom I speculate are themselves members of the media. While I find these apologists at best defensive, at worst trying to re-establish credibility before selling us a bigger load of bull re: Iran, you need not agree to follow this diary.
Amir Taheri is a Neocon colleague at Benador of Richard Perle, Charles Krauthammer and the like. Taheri published last Friday, in Canada's National Post,
a fabrication Iran was imposing a dress code for Jews. You can follow the play-by-play of the unravelling of the lie
here.
Less than 24 hours later, the story was confirmed to be a hoax. Iran has no dress code, and there is no proposal for one for women, Jews or any group. Iran is toying with subsidizing manufacturers of traditional clothes, and encouraging media there to support this. All Iranians remain free to dress as they see fit, something even a Jewish member of Iran's Parliament concedes.
Taheri was not "duped" here. Taheri's occupation is expatriate dissident journalist. Far from some youthful freedom fighter, Taheri was the Shah of Iran's editor. The Shah, you might recall, was a brutal right-wing military dictator. The "Shah" bit never makes the byline of Taheri's "news" stories which are run by "Post" newspapers such as Canada's National Post, the New York Post and the Jerusalem Post. It's also omitted on Benador's bio of Taheri, linked to above.
I'm going to expand on all of this today. But, I'd like to get to the punch line:
If the US media have integrity, and if they are truly trying to "get better", then it must be a news story, today, when the same prominent Neocons are caught, red-handed, telling the same lies about Iran they once told about Iraq, with the same US media committing the same errors of omission as before.. Googling, there appears to be no critical story examining this issue, in either the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the Los Angeles Times. (nb: Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Wiesenthal Center is still telling the lie, tragically.)
If the US media are serious about "doing their jobs," then I expect to see in-depth analyses of the Taheri lie, soon, in each of our national newspapers of record. And, one from Howie Kurtz, of course.
