Humint Events Online: Media Mea Culpas

Thursday, September 23, 2004

Media Mea Culpas

The media has to some extent reviewed its record on the run-up to the Iraq war, and found its coverage overly credulous and underly skeptical of administration claims. While this is true, and to the extent they have apologized, it isn't enough. And of course they won't take any real blame for their part in the war.

The reason I bring this up is because there has been absolutely NO review of administration claims about 9/11. The media happily gobbled everything up the administration said without any hesitation. The media willfully ignored several oddities of the events of 9/11, and in their moment of great national importance-- EVERYONE was watching them-- gleefully sold the official 9/11 story to a shocked and gullible public. And, to me this is much much worse than the Iraq war coverage, becuase the crimes of 9/11 started it all--- this vast nightmare we find ourselves in with regard to the Bush administration and their ill-conceived and mis-begotten "war on terror".

I can only wonder if the media will EVER review their coverage of 9/11, because surely they have taken us down a dark and dangerous path.

UPDATE: via Atrios, I see the Bush guard memo story mea culpa is EVEN more important than the Iraq WMD mea culpa by the NY Times.

So to our media, in order of importance is: 1) CBS screwing up, 2) the NYTimes screwing up on the rationale for the Iraq war, and far far down 3) 9/11.

No wonder we are so screwed.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I doubt they will do it.

In Germany, some months ago a leading weekly (Der Spiegel) had a cover story regarding the lies that led to the Iraq war. Thus, it is possible to say that the administration lied in this specific case.

At the same, Der Spiegel is vigorously attacking the people who doubt the official version of 9/11. It is absolutely taboo to suggest the US administration could have lied about anything connected to 9/11.

The Germans are skeptics of the US foreing policy, so a limited critique is ok. But the implications of a serious discussion of 9/11 would probably be too far-reaching for the German media. I assume the same holds for their US counterparts.

gandalf

12:18 PM  
Blogger spooked said...

Gandalf-- thanks for the comment.

I'm sure you're right. The whole 9/11 legend has sort of an institutional nature, and if the media tugged too hard at 9/11, they would surely unravel themselves-- which means they will never do it. I bet in another 25 years, however, they will be able to talk a little more openly about it. By then, it will be too late, of course, to do anything about it.

12:33 PM  

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