Norman Solomon

News Media in the 60th Year of the Nuclear Age

Top officials in Washington are now promoting jitters about Iran’s nuclear activities, while media outlets amplify the message. A confrontation with Tehran is on the second-term Bush agenda. So, we’re encouraged to obliquely think about the unthinkable.

But no one can get very far trying to comprehend the enormity of nuclear weapons. They’ve shadowed human consciousness for six decades. From the outset, deception has been key...

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Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience With Atomic Radiation (Delacorte Press, 1982), a book by Harvey Wasserman and Norman Solomon, is online in html and as a PDF (scroll to the bottom of the page).

A Voluntary Tic in Media Coverage of Iraq

When misleading buzzwords become part of the media landscape, they slant news coverage and skew public perceptions. That's the story with the phrase "Iraqi forces" -- now in routine use by U.S. media outlets, including the country's most influential newspapers.

The New York Times and the Washington Post have been leading the way in news stories that apply the indigenous "Iraqi forces" label to Iraqi fighters who are pro-U.S.-occupation ... but not to Iraqi fighters who are anti-U.S.-occupation...

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A Distant Mirror of Holy War

The conflict in Iraq has become a holy war. In both directions.

On the surface, the most prominent headline on the New York Times front page Nov. 10 was simply matter-of-fact: “In Taking Fallujah Mosque, Victory by the Inch.” Yet it’s not mere happenstance that American forces have bombed many of Fallujah’s mosques.

For public consumption, U.S. military officers -- like their civilian bosses and American journalists -- usually discuss this war in secular, even antiseptic terms...

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Media Matters

Norman Solomon was on Robert McChesney's Media Matters radio program on November 7th. Real Audio and an MP3 (25MB) are online.

Transforming Four More Years

Right-wing trumpets are making a horrific racket across a ravaged political landscape. For now, hope is barely audible. Progressives seem like fledglings without feathers, weakly tapping from inside thick shells. Four more years sound like hell.

Words from Bertolt Brecht resonate: “... A smooth forehead betokens / A hard heart. He who laughs / Has not yet heard / The terrible tidings.”

Grief, fear, despair, rage -- only the emotionally deadened would have none of it. Bush’s victory is a huge defeat for humanity. The consequences will be extremely grim.

Ideological fanatics have extended their control over the Executive Branch while increasing their domination of Congress. The “leaders” who lied the country into war are plunging ahead with escalating carnage in Iraq. Soon they’ll take action to make the Supreme Court more authoritarian -- threatening abortion rights, freedom of speech, basic legal protections for defendants and other civil liberties. A theocratic stench is in the air...

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Elections and the Specter of Things Unseen

The day before the election, I visited Albuquerque and Las Vegas. Up close, I saw hundreds of people involved in vigorous get-out-the-vote efforts. Most were young; they seemed very idealistic. These Americans had an opportunity to make a difference, and -- brought together by labor unions and such groups as the MoveOn PAC -- they took it.

Watching the election returns scarcely 24 hours later, I kept an eye on the results from New Mexico and Nevada. The vote tallies were close in both states because of such activism; otherwise, the Bush-Cheney ticket would have won easily.

On Wednesday, as the pundits kept chattering on television, I thought about how far removed the TV studios and newsrooms tend to be from the active idealism of the grassroots. All over this country, literally millions of people cherish the belief that what they choose to do can make a difference. A big difference....

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