Norman Solomon

Major "Liberal" Outlets Clog Media Diets

For many years, health-conscious Americans avidly consumed margarine as a wholesome substitute for artery-clogging butter. Only later did research shed light on grim effects of the partially hydrogenated oil in margarine, with results such as higher incidences of heart disease.

Putting our trust in bogus alternatives can be dangerous for our bodies. And for the body politic.

For many years, staples of the highbrow American media diet have included NPR News and the New York Times. Both outlets are copious and seem erudite, in contrast to abbreviated forms of news. And with conservative spin widespread in news media, NPR and the Times appeal to listeners and readers who prefer journalism without a rightward slant...

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About That Invitation to Join the Bush-Cheney '04 Team...

To: Marc Racicot, Chairman, Bush-Cheney '04

Thanks for including me on your mailing list. I'm very interested in mass communications, and I realize that millions of people have also received the same piece of direct mail this spring. So I was impressed by the personal touch at the top of your letter -- where it says "Dear Friend" but a line is drawn through "Friend" and hand-lettering says "Norman."

Since we're already on a first-name basis, Marc, here are some thoughts in response to your letter:

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The Coming Backlash Against Outrage

Looking at visual images from U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, news watchers now find themselves in the midst of a jolting experience that roughly resembles a process described by Donald Rumsfeld: "It is the photographs that gives one the vivid realization of what actually took place. Words don’t do it. ... You see the photographs, and you get a sense of it, and you cannot help but be outraged."

Yet, unlike most of us, the defense secretary has a vested interest in claiming that the grotesque real-life images have nothing to do with U.S. policies. In Iraq, Rumsfeld has reaffirmed, "I am convinced that we are doing exactly what ought to be done." Under the circumstances, it would be astonishing if he said anything different. But hopefully most Americans are more willing to consider implications of the fact that the U.S. government has been operating chambers of horrors that run directly counter to America’s self-image as a righteous military force.

In the weeks ahead, we’ll be encouraged to turn away from information surfacing about imprisonment and interrogation techniques that have held sway under U.S. authority in Iraq. Atrocities will be discounted, excuses made, messengers blamed...

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This War & Racism - Media Denial in Overdrive

Among the millions of words that have appeared in the U.S. press since late April about abuse and torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, one has been notably missing:

Racism.

Overall, when it comes to racial aspects, the news coverage is quite PC -- as in Pentagon Correct. The outlook is "apple pie" egalitarian, with the media picture including high-profile officers who are African-American and Latino. Meanwhile, inside the policy arena, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice are frequently in front of cameras to personify Uncle Sam in blackface.

The U.S. government doesn’t drop bombs on people because of their race. Washington’s geopolitical agendas lead to military actions. But racial biases make the war process easier when the people being killed and maimed aren’t white people. An oversize elephant in the American media’s living room is a reality that few journalists talk about in public: The USA keeps waging war on countries where the victims resemble people who often experience personal and institutional racism in the United States.

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Reality Check

Norman Solomon was quoted by Salon's Eric Boehlert in
Reality Check: The media are finally showing the war in its full horror. What took them so long?

April's unexpected chaos in Iraq may signal a shift toward bolder, grittier wartime press coverage. For an entire year before then, much of the mainstream American news media was dutiful, if not outright timid. There were still remnants of hesitation when the Abu Ghraib prison story broke last week, particularly in how major U.S. newspapers tentatively dealt with the disturbing images on their front pages. CBS's "60 Minutes II" unveiled the now-famous photos exclusively on Wednesday night, April 28, and by Friday morning they were widely available to the press. Network television newscasts and cable outlets broadcast the images. On Saturday, nearly 20 large American newspapers ran Page 1 articles about the story. But of those, only a handful, including the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, ran any photographs of the abused captives on A1.

The rest, including the New York Times, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Baltimore Sun, Miami Herald, Detroit News and Free Press, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Columbus Dispatch and Oakland Tribune, ran Page 1 stories about the controversial photos without actually publishing images alongside their stories. On Monday, USA Today, which does not publish on weekends, joined the list of newspapers whose editors decided that coverage of the abuse photos was worthy of the front-page but not the actual images themselves.

"They're clearly newsworthy, Page 1 photos," says Norman Solomon, author of "Target Iraq: What the Media Didn't Tell You." "The press, physiologically, is still embedded with the Pentagon, to a degree. I think there's a squeamishness among American editors because the [abuse] photographs run so counter to the image of the war that's been portrayed by a press -- a war of liberation."

New York Times executive editor Bill Keller insists that had nothing to do with why the paper opted to run the photos inside the paper. "By the time we had assurance that the pictures were genuine, they had been so widely distributed [on television] that we opted to run a couple of the pictures inside rather than front them," he explains. For Keller, the episode was just the latest example of how the country's deep partisan divide often projects itself onto news coverage. "People who think the war is wrong feel the coverage is sanitized. Those who feel the war is right are in favor of pictures of victory and 'Mission Accomplished.'"

Staying the Media Course in Iraq

On his way to confirmation as U.S. ambassador to Iraq, the current U.N. envoy John Negroponte was busily twisting language like a pretzel at a Senate hearing the other day. The new Baghdad regime, to be installed on June 30, will have sovereignty. Well, sort of. Negroponte explained: "That is why I use the term 'exercise of sovereignty.' I think in the case of military activity, their forces will come under the unified command of the multinational force. That is the plan."

In other words, the Baghdad government will be praised as the embodiment of Iraqi sovereignty while the U.S. military continues to do whatever Washington wants it to do in Iraq -- including order the Iraqi military around. Negroponte talked about "real dialogue between our military commanders, the new Iraqi government and, I think, the United States mission as well." But ultimately, he said, the American military "is going to have the freedom to act in their self-defense, and they’re going to be free to operate in Iraq as they best see fit."

The disconnect between democracy rhetoric and imperial reality is glaring enough to require some media acknowledgment.

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