The last ten days have been among the most shameful in the history of American journalism.
On April 20th, the New York Times published its expose of the Bush administration's use of Pentagon-approved, prepped, and financially-enriched "military analysts" to appear on TV to help sell the invasion of Iraq, and then put a positive spin on the occupation -- even as conditions on the ground deteriorated.
It was a powerful illustration of the Bush administration's commitment to propaganda and disinformation. But it was also a damning indictment of the mainstream media's complicity in the wholesale deception of the American public on the single most important decision a country can make -- the decision to go to war.
How big a story was it? John Stauber of the Center for Media and Democracy called it the Pentagon Papers of the Iraq war.
So it only stands to reason that a story this explosive would quickly become the subject of extensive follow-ups by TV and print journalists, and endless debate on the political talk shows, right?
Wrong.
Instead of opening their reportorial and analytical floodgates, the mainstream news media have all but ignored the story. Free Press