real journalism

Cave Pantings

Remember how a few days ago, it was all evil-Newsweek vs the good and honorable Administration?

Well, as was to be expected in this day of managed news and spun journalism, it now comes out that the International Red Cross warned the Pentagon about abuses of the Quran, the holy book of Islam, as far back as 2002 and 2003. As mentioned previously, the substance of these warnings were not the least bit out of character for those in charge of our military interrogation procedures. A simple recall of the abuses in Abu Ghraib should convince anyone of that.

Yet for days now, Newsweek has been vilified by wingnuts and average citizens alike for the implications that their story ignited riots and killings in Afghanistan last week. Newsweek, for their part, caved in to the government and the rest of the media who were ever so quick to march in lockstep with the Administration lest they be next on the hot seat.

Newsweek's reputation is now severely damaged. The news story itself was...until today...assumed to be false and the PR advantage went quickly to the Administration.

Newsweek deserves all the bad press it can get, not for this story, but for so quickly caving into the pressure of the anti-media crowd in and out of the White House.

We, the people, rely on information that outlets like Newsweek provide, even if the information has become less and less truly informative over the years. Still, if the shift to Fox News and the endless spew of right-wing hate radio increases while Time, Newsweek and the major newspapers continue to dumb down their journalistic standards, Americans will increasingly come to believe like an Administration officially so candidly observed, ""we are an empire .... we create reality and you react to it ...".

posted by mauiloa @ 10:50 AM