Newspeak and Media Management

"In the lexicon of the Pentagon, and then in the loyal American media, body bags became 'human remains pouches' and coffins became 'transfer tubes'. American dead arriving home did so in the early hours of the morning at a small military airport in Delaware. President Bush did not attend a single ceremony for the dead, either during or after the War."

Hugh Miles 'Al-Jazeera - How Arab TV News Challenged The World" p. 259.

Comments

[Jim]

Will General Sanchez's address to military editors and reporters prove to be a clarion call for often compliant and at times coopted journalists?

Will it allow the media to wriggle out of their age of denial, dismissal and disapproval of sources to press for having sources providing alternate view of outside world particularly Iraq.

According to General Sanchez: “The best we can do with this flawed approach is stave-off defeat. The administration, Congress and the entire interagency, especially the Department of State, must shoulder the responsibility for this catastrophic failure and the American people must hold them accountable.” Sanchez asked point blank:
“Who will demand accountability for the failure of our national political leaders involved in the management this war?”

It is not surprising that it took a uniformed officer four years to speak up his mind in public (upon retirement). What is far more worrisome is that the US mainstream media has not risen up to secure straight, clear-cut answers.

Media outlets ought to answer why it hasn’t sufficiently probed the cakewalk crowd who promised a casual march to victory in Iraq. How many media activists pressed for accountability of the likes of Ken Adelmen who misled the American media by claiming “measured by any cost-benefit analysis, such an operation would constitute the greatest victory in America’s war on terrorism.” Had American tax payers an easy access to alternate information sources it wouldn’t have taken them four years to question the wisdom of the “cakewalk” bunch. Thus encouraging and embracing alternate sources of media has become increasingly important at a time when many US media organs tiptoe around issues in fear of overstepping their boundaries.

An Italian scholar of the Arab media, Donatella della Ratta rightly suggests that the West should seriously consider before blaming or blocking channels like Aljazeera that are in fact educating tools to inform rather than a medium providing an embedded version from a warring side. If the likes of Aljazeera English had wider access in to American homes it would not have taken this long to see the contradictions between the lofty claims made at the Capitol and actual realities faced on ground.

At a conference, "Creating Connections: New Partnerships for Understanding in the Middle East," sponsored by the Vermont Peace Academy, Vermont Council on World Affairs and Norwich University. A participant said: "It's an intellectual tragedy that the United States has cut itself out of Al Jazeera English's contribution to [informative] conversation. Everything that's happened to us in Iraq shows that's very dangerous. The lesson of Iraq is: Ignorance kills."

http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071007/NEWS03/710070376/1004/NEWS03

Instead of making wrong choices and pursuing wrong approaches that are just goose-chasing and witch-hunting exercises US needs to befriend with the ones that capture and portray the facts professionally and far effectively. Now more than ever the USA public and its opinions makers need tools that can help them separate the wheat from the chaff not occasionally but on an on-going, round the clock basis.