Adam L. Silverman, PhD*
In light of Harper's recent post about the death of truth in media, as well as the SST's community ongoing interest in Iran and the politics and policy pertaining to it, it is always good to see what members of the news media have to say about what is actually going on in terms of the reporting. There was precious little of this in 2002 and 2003 as US policy towards Iraq was being set, and what little there was got those who voiced it fired. Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi has done everyone a huge service by providing an insider's view of what is going on with the reporting regarding Iran:
"As a journalist, there’s a buzz you can detect once the normal restraints in your business have been loosened, a smell of fresh chum in the waters, urging us down the road to war. Many years removed from the Iraq disaster, that smell is back, this time with Iran.
You can just feel it: many of the same newspapers and TV stations we saw leading the charge in the Bush years have gone back to the attic and are dusting off their war pom-poms. CNN’s house blockhead, the Goldman-trained ex-finance professional Erin Burnett, came out with a doozie of a broadcast yesterday, a Rumsfeldian jeremiad against the Iranian threat would have fit beautifully in the Saddam’s-sending-drones-at-New-York halcyon days of late 2002."
Click on through and read the whole thing. Its worth the time. For a real treat google "matt taibbi tom friedman book review" - you will laugh till it hurts!
*Adam L. Silverman is the Culture and Foreign Language Advisor at the US Army War College (USAWC). The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of USAWC and/or the US Army.
