Bingo! This was an excellent post.

Editorial control over things such as story placement, headline/story wording,and space and time allotment, determines not only what the message is but just how the message gets amplified.

Thanks for posting this.

Larre-
that's a great post and very disturbing.

Ostensibly, Massing set out to ask how Bush could have won reelection when his Iraq policy so plainly is a catastrophe for all concerned.

The answer is 'quod rex vult, lex fit'.

If the facts, and the king's understanding of the facts, do not comport with one another, monarchical theory requires the creation of new facts that do comport with the king's understanding.

While the King-in-His-Person may err, and the King may be misled by ministers corrupt, venal or incompetent, the King-in-His-Majesty cannot, by definition, be wrong.

Throw away your Federalist Papers, and go out and buy a good translation of Bossuet instead.

Great post.

The problem starts with language, of course. The media has bought into the US terminology in it's coverage.

Even this article uses the phrase "Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi". He is NOT a prime minister. He was not elected as a member of parliment, nor was he elected as the leader of his party. He is, if he were given an accurate title, the Iraqi Regent -- a caretaker until the next government is recognized.

The term "Prime Minister" deliberately conveys the wrong impressions: of democracy (he is a puppet of the US), of independence, of popularity. At the bare minimum the press should call him "acting Prime Minister". Better would be to do with him as we do with dictators who call themselves "President", and make the origins of their title clear, as in "self-titled Prime Minister Allawi" or "The U.S.-appointed regent, so-called 'Prime Minister' Allawi".

Then there is the label "Iraqi army". Correct labeling would be "U.S.-supported Kurdish army" and would also explain why they receive such intense resistance from other parts of the country. Or, for the non-Kurdish parts of the Army that the US is trying to create, use the phrase "US-funded Iraqi irregular army" since the non-Kurds have extremely weak training and equipment.

Finally, "softening up the targets" should be translated to "bombing civilian areas where resisters are thought to be hiding".

One of the things with the Washington Post is that often the important stories are on page A17.

Well Yes?

Joseph Goebbells würde Faux News, Klaren Channel, Sinclair Broadcasting, GE-MSNBC, Zeit-Warner CNN, Rupurt Murdoch, und Bush&Co's des Newspeak bringen zur Amerikanischen Invasion von Irak als ein "War on Terror."

What you are seeing is the dismantling of the integrity and functioning of our press. Within four more years, you will have to think twice before speaking for fear that your words will get you arrested. The Government will start next on surpressing blog sites. It is just a matter of time.

Anyone who remembers the concept behind Frank Zappa’s (why do the good ones always die young?)”Joe’s Garage”can understand the parallel. We must be protected from ourselves. Using this reasoning, Judith is right, blogs must be banned for they promote the most dangerous thing in the world: thought.

And the sad fact is , as long as the average American doesn’t have to worry about a military draft outrage against the war will remain a manageable nuisance and the Bush administration knows this.
You can just live your life, the professional solders will fight for you. You don’t have to think about security, 911 is all you need to know. You don’t need to know about other countries, chanting “USA, you ess aay, USA”is all you need to do.

So why should we care about the faces behind the faces? We have certainty guaranteed . All we have to do is nothing, our lives will be managed for us.

Larre, I'm really glad you posted about this topic - it is indeed one of the ways our media has truly failed us. Last night I was listening to the original producer of 20-20 say that he didn't think there was any way to improve our media these days because the tabloid format was the most lucrative form and was guaranteed to get worse, not better. According to him, people like Massing (and the retiring Bill Moyers) are fighting a losing battle.

If so, there is only a slight hope for having a working democracy in this country. But, since other countries have figured out how to have regulation that supports real democracy, it seems to me that it MUST be possible to reclaim our airwaves and our discourse from these greedy and immoral captains of the media.

A lack of critical thought on behalf of the American public is to blame..it is difficult to blame the media when their customers, the general public, is willing to accept nonsense as fact in the face of reality. Now we are going to blame the UN for the Oil-for-Food graft yet we will not hold the CPA accountable for the $6-8 billion shortfall in Iraq oil revenues...Bu$h Co has been peeing on our legs and telling us it's raining since the start of this fiasco. There have been ample rebuts to the Admin's nonsense on the blogs and in the Progressive press...but hey the ignorant rednecks have taken over and only catsatrophe will change the course of action...seems we're stuck in Kansas, Toto.