It appears that the MSM has been doing a “Katrina” on the aftermath of the Iraq shrine bombing. Looking for analysis, I found that Greyhawk of Mudville Gazette has done some careful research on MSM reportage versus reality. Greyhawk also offers useful analysis of why the reportage is biased. Here’s an excerpt in which Greyhawk quotes from a 23 February Roger Simon interview of Wall Street Journal’s Richard Miniter:
Richard Miniter: Everyone talks about intelligence failures, no one talks about media failures. The media is the people’s intelligence service, and it’s failing us.
You want to talk about why it’s so biased?
Remember before the war, CNN, Eason Jordan made that ridiculous thing where we had to hire the fixers from Saddam’s ministry or they’d be executed. We had to cover the Iraqi dictatorship in a certain way… paid Iraqis…
Roger Simon: The blogosphere was all over that one…
Richard Miniter: Who does CNN have working for them now covering the Iraq war?
The same people, the same Iraqi fixers.
So lets see, it’s 1946, it’s Germany, I need to understand German. Why don’t I hire some Nazis to interview some Jewish survivors and explain post-war Germany by hiring Nazis?
They’re hiring Ba’athist Sunnis, that’s why the coverage is so bad. They went from imbedded with the US troops and just reporting what they saw, and the effect was marvelous. It was accurate, it was up to date, it was interesting, it changed all the time.
And now it’s formulaic and ideological.
Why?
Because their fixers, their intermediaries between their safe little lives in the Palestine or al Rashid Hotels and the outside world are former members of the regime.
Definitely RTWT.
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