Yes, indeed. Further corroboration that "It's the
Media, Stupid."
Norman Solomon, www.tompaine.com: With intimidation in the air, all but a few mainstream journalists tamped down criticisms and lacquered on adulation. A kind of war-mentality sheen covered public surfaces. Guided by Bush’s top strategist Karl Rove, the administration strove to exploit the tragedy of 9/11 at every turn. In the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, as the extent of prewar lies forced the Bush administration into a defensive crouch, reliance on images and rhetoric about 9/11 was more important than ever. For the Bush team, frequent invocation of 9/11 seemed dependable as a fortified version of patriotism—the last, and most promising, refuge of scoundrels.
Break the Bush Cabal Stranglehold on the "US
Mainstream News Media," Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/10152
Second Draft
Norman Solomon is the author of The Habits of Highly
Deceptive Media and co-author, with Reese Erlich, of
Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn’t Tell You. He
writes Media Beat, a nationally syndicated column.
For 30 months, 9/11 was a huge political blessing for
George W. Bush. This week, the media halo fell off.
Within the space of a few days, culminating with his
testimony to the Sept. 11 commission Wednesday
afternoon, former counterterrorism chief Richard
Clarke did serious damage to a public-relations scam
that the White House has been running for two and a
half years.
We may forget just how badly President Bush was doing
until Sept. 11, 2001. That morning, a front-page
Philadelphia Inquirer story told of dire political
straits; his negative rating among the nation’s
crucial independent swing voters stood at 53 percent,
according to the latest survey by nonpartisan pollster
John Zogby.
On Sept. 12, Bush’s media stature and poll numbers
were soaring. Suddenly, news outlets all over the
country boosted the president as a great leader,
sometimes likening him to FDR. For many months, the
overall media coverage of President Bush was
reverential.
With intimidation in the air, all but a few mainstream
journalists tamped down criticisms and lacquered on
adulation. A kind of war-mentality sheen covered
public surfaces. Guided by Bush’s top strategist Karl
Rove, the administration strove to exploit the tragedy
of 9/11 at every turn. In the aftermath of the Iraq
invasion, as the extent of prewar lies forced the Bush
administration into a defensive crouch, reliance on
images and rhetoric about 9/11 was more important than
ever. For the Bush team, frequent invocation of 9/11
seemed dependable as a fortified version of
patriotism—the last, and most promising, refuge of
scoundrels.
The anger that we’re now hearing from the White House
is the sound of an administration being hoisted by its
own 9/11 petard.
The Bush estate has bet the political farm on 9/11.
True, the focus of initial television commercials on
Sept. 11 imagery can always be adjusted later. But the
Bush-Cheney campaign must remain inseparably tied to
9/11. The Republican Party’s national convention was
scheduled unusually late on the calendar in
Manhattan—early September—to indelibly link the
Bush-Cheney ticket to Sept. 11.
Hitting the USS Bush at the time of the spring
equinox, the current media gale has not been all that
harsh. But the media upheaval is striking because of
its contrast with the very favorable political climate
that the Bush political vessel has been able to create
and navigate in relation to 9/11 until this spring.
Bush’s prior media problems with Iraq war policy are
helping to compound his 9/11 media debacle of recent
days. Now, with Clarke recounting the administration’s
fixation on Iraq in the immediate aftermath of Sept.
11, there’s extra public outrage about the new
firsthand evidence that Bush was eager to pursue his
discredited Iraq obsession even while the World Trade
Center was on fire.
For the Bush-Cheney-Rove administration, the parallels
and negative synergies between Iraq and 9/11 issues
include the common thread of extreme dishonesty. On
March 22—while a typical Wall Street Journal editorial
sputtered that the Sept. 11 commission had been
hijacked "to provide a vehicle to embarrass the Bush
administration" —the same newspaper’s front page was
featuring a lead article about Sept. 11 events
politely headlined "Government Accounts of 9/11 Reveal
Gaps, Inconsistencies." Based on the article’s
meticulous reporting, a less circumspect headline
could have been: "Bush, Cheney and Top Aides Now
Tangled Up in 9/11 Deceptions."
This week, news departments that were slow on the
uptake quickly found themselves out of step. While the
Washington Post front-paged a major substantive
article March 22 about Clarke’s charges, The New York
Times buried its coverage of the subject on a back
page. (The anemic Times article carried the byline of
Judith Miller, who rendered invaluable prewar service
to the Bush administration by reporting the existence
of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—based on
anonymous sourcing. Miller’s source turned out to be
the Pentagon’s favorite hand-picked Iraqi exile
"leader," Ahmed Chalabi.) After badly lagging behind
the Post, on March 23 the Times played catch-up on the
Clarke story.
Whether the Bush campaign can regain control of 9/11
as a political football remains to be seen. We should
never forget that real people died on that day, and
real people are still dying in Iraq because of
depraved political games in Washington.
People in positions of enormous power are never more
dangerous than when they see their power seriously
threatened. The counterattacks on Clarke have only
just begun. And during the next several months, the
Bush-Cheney-Rove administration is sure to reach into
its very large bag of media tricks. Whether the
trickery is successful will largely depend on whether
journalists do their civic duty or kowtow to the White
House.
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Published: Mar 25 2004