- Thread starter
- #21
The corporate media conglomerates (which are falsely labeled "liberal" and "conservative" when really they're just "Democratic Party-leaning" and "Republican Party-leaning" which isn't remotely the same thing) passed on thousands of false government claims going back to at least the early days of Vietnam. Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and now Obama have all benefited and the people suffered from mainstream news organizations implicit trust in government claims and dependence upon government sources. It's gotten worse since the 80's with the whittling down of news ownership to merely five enormous companies, but it's been bad for a long time and it has nothing to do with which party is in power. CNN just as uncritically passed on the Bush Administration's claims (WMD? Anthrax? Saddam-Al Qaeda connection?) and they'll pass on the next administration's claims too. It's cooperation with the government in general, it doesn't matter who happens to be in charge of the government, they call the shots.
And actually, though war crimes are obviously important, deserve investigation and punishment, the point of the thread is not about the military's actions so much as the Pentagon's lies and the "filthy" media's willingness to pass on those lies to propagandize the American public. We continue to be sold the Occupation of Afghanistan (by this mentally deranged administration) based on a steaming pile of falsehoods. And despite the debacle that was the coverage of the Iraq War and the hundreds of revelations relating to the media not fact-checking false government claims which led us into war, they've not learned their lesson one bit.
They rely on official government sources for stories, depend on them for quotes on and off the record, and are fundamentally lazy and subservient, so if the Pentagon says it, it gets reported as fact regardless of whether or not it's true.
My intent was to highlight this story and how it serves as a microcosm of poor war reporting and the misinformed public opinion that results, so exposing Administration hypocrisy and media lies is actually exactly what I was aiming for. Thanks.
Last edited:
