WHY IRAQ DISAPPEARED FROM THE CORPORATE MEDIA

WHY IRAQ DISAPPEARED FROM THE CORPORATE MEDIA

By PraetorOne

With 4000 Americans dead, sectarian violence on the rise in Iraq, and with the fragile truce with al-Sadr coming unraveled at the seams, our wonderful American media has shifted the focus away from the failing Surge in Iraq to domestic matters: The nonstop and all too irrelevant bitching between Senators Clinton and Obama, a message found in a bottle, and interests of personal interest such as the price of gas and the coming recession. Granted, the economy is an important issue, but will somebody please tell me what Obama and Clinton can possibly do or say that we haven’t heard already? Will someone please tell me what a message in a bottle has to do with anything?

Welcome to the glorious world of the right wing corporate media where self interest, fluff, and negativity take precedence over issues of substance.

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting just a little sick and tired of distractions from important issues. Iraq is clearly more important than a message found in a bottle and it clearly deserves equal coverage along side the economy and the democratic primary process, and yet, in yet another attempt to cover up another sanguinary failure on the part of the Bush Administration it is treating the Obama-Clinton race (if it bleeds it leads) and the bottled message (another distraction) as if they are the equivalent of a relevant news story.

Not that we should be surprised. These after all are the same right wing media which played the part of Bush-adoring cheerleaders during the run up to the war, and which quite literally had to be shamed into reporting on the failures we encountered during the invasion and occupation. And now, after five years of bloodshed, the media have opted to ignore the war and concentrate on other topics, apparently assuming that the American people can’t follow more than one important story at a time.

But the part which strikes me as peculiar is the timing. After the Surge the media again resumed their role as cheerleaders, gleefully pointing out that the level of violence and number of deaths had gone down but failing to report that the Administration and its political puppets in Iraq were playing fast and loose with the manner in which the number of Iraqi civilian deaths were counted. Why, if you didn’t know better you’d think that orders had come down from the media owners and key advertisers, telling the editors and reporters to cut the proverbial crap and concentrate on other issues. They wouldn’t want to see the Republicans embarrassed now, would they? Not when corporate America benefits so heftily from Republican policies; not after the media owners and the advertisers invest so heavily in Republican campaign coffers.

All right, it usually isn’t that blatant. But is there anyone here who doesn’t believe that there are unspoken rules which editors and reporters know they should follow? Do we really believe that there aren’t unspoken guidelines that editors and reporters know they have to follow if they want to keep their jobs? Moreover, the highest paid journalists have themselves become a part of the class on which they are supposed to be reporting. The right loves to talk about the liberal bias in the media, but that only holds in so far as social issues are concerned. When it comes to economic issues, reporters know on which side their bread is buttered, and if that means ignoring stories or putting a certain slant on them to stay in the good graces of their corporate/Republican masters, they will quickly and obedient drop to one knee and gravel before their right wing masters. Additionally, high paid journalists know that they won’t be called upon at press conferences if they raise the wrong topic or ask the wrong question, and that complicates the situation even further.

Am I surprised by the manner in which Iraq has disappeared from both, the headlines and from coverage in general? No, not really. It’s the nature of the beast. If it hurts the Democrats (think Obama and Clinton pouring pails of verbal manure over one another) or if it distracts from Republican SNAFUs (think messages in bottles, infotainment, and celebrity news) it’s going to dominate or disappear from the American media–which ever serves the Republicans and their corporate allies the best.

Now where did I put those links to NPR, the BBC, and The Guardian?