Manipulating News

Bush and Company Silence the Critics

James Zogby seems to feel that the Bush administration is somehow 'managing' the news that Americans recieve:

All of this is to say that the United States public is in the dark about much of what is happening or not happening in Iraq and Afghanistan and the magnitude of the challenges facing both countries. What they know is that the United States is facing an upgraded “Orange Alert”, “Saddam has been caught” and the “United States is still fighting and winning the long war against terror”.

Even with this, the public remains deeply divided. But with accurate news so difficult to come by in this “cloud of war” that has descended on the country, it is increasingly hard to discuss the merits, or even the reality, of this war or the foreign policy that led us into it.

This will continue to be the situation in the next year. Reality may, on occasion, break through and the press may respond with tough stories, asking hard questions. But as the past few weeks have shown the administration has more arrows in its quiver, and, as the situation warrants, they may decide when and how to use them.

Perhaps Mr. Zogby simply fails to state that it is possible to 'manage' the news in ways that are not in any way deceptive. You know, like doing positive things that supercede the negative. Otherwise, if Zogby is asserting that Bush has control of every liberal media outlet in the country, his claims are absurd. Either way, it seems that Zog is himself attempting to sway opinion in some way. Given that his views appear in Arab News one is left to wonder exactly what it is that Zogby hopes to accomplish. Or not.

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