Why the media failed Americans

[Moloch]

When on May 26 the editors of the New York Times published a mea culpa for the paper's one-sided reporting on weapons of mass destruction and the Iraq war, they admitted to "a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been". They also commented that they had since come to "wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining claims" made by the administration of US President George W Bush.

But we are still left to wonder why the Times, like many other major media in this country, was so lacking in skepticism toward administration rationales for war. How could such a poorly thought-through policy, based on spurious exile intelligence sources, have been so blithely accepted, even embraced, by so many members of the media? In short, what happened to the press's vaunted role, so carefully spelled out by the Founding Fathers of the United States, as a skeptical "watchdog" over government?

There's nothing like seeing a well-oiled machine clank to a halt to help you spot problems. Now that the Bush administration is in full defensive mode and angry leakers in the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and elsewhere in the Washington bureaucracy are slipping documents, secrets, and charges to reporters, our press looks more recognizably journalistic. But that shouldn't stop us from asking how an "independent" press in a "free" country could have been so paralyzed for so long. It not only failed to investigate administration rationales for war seriously, but little took into account the myriad voices in the online, alternative, and world press that sought to do so.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FG16Aa01.html

[rpannier]

1. But..but..but...krap..i mean koppel said

the media did an excellent job. he couldn't be wrong....could he?

[Malva Zebrina]

2. they did do a crummy job and are still doing a crummy job

however, they failed to bring the truth to the people, but those in congress had access to other information and the same inmformation we did who consulted other resources than the bought media. Is it the media's responsibility to educate the congress?

The congress had the opportunity to do some research. They have aides to do that. We can blame the media for the percentages of Americans who believed Bush, but can we blame the media for the poor and pandering response of the congress?--or is the congress going by the people's perceptions? I don't think so. So many letters were written, so many people were in the stret protesting, that it would seem that the congress paid little attention to the people.

[NJCher]

3. America doesn't exist in a vacuum

...it would seem that the congress paid little attention to the people.

Yeah, the people who were reading foreign newspapers on the Internet because it was so obvious the American media was nothing but an outlet for state-sponsored propaganda.


Cher

[Miss Authoritiva]

4. The media failed Americans, and Americans let the media fail them.

Bush failed Americans, and Americans let Bush fail them. Congress failed Americans, and Americans let Congress fail them.

Are Americans so easy-going that we just shrug off unprovoked wars, the erosion of civil liberties, and trillion dollar deficits -- even as elected officials and their media cohorts rhetorically bitch-slap us every day about our questionable moral values, our reluctance to accept personal responsibility, our slothful inability to live on minimum wages, our mewling dependence on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security....

It's as though we don't even expect anything better than this anymore.

[The Zanti Regent]

5. but Jim Liar says the media is TOO HARD on Bush

Jim Liar and his fellow lying NPR compatriots should have their umbilical cut!

[izzie]

6. Guess people only read what feeds their beliefs.

Their are people who think the country is better with Bush and Co. I just do not understand that but they do not understand my way of thinking. I just can not hear or read and see what they are saying as good for anyone I know but they do. So who is right? The news will feed each or us and how we believe.