44 lines
3.1 KiB
Plaintext
44 lines
3.1 KiB
Plaintext
Media Analysts Sound Pessimistic as Iraq Civil War Fails to Materialize
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<p>WASHINGTON — Media analysts sounded an increasingly gloomy<br />
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note today following news that a full-scale outbreak of civil war in<br />
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Iraq had been averted. “The prospects for regime change in Washington<br />
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seem increasingly remote,” said one senior White House reporter who<br />
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spoke on condition of anonymity.</p>
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<p><span id="more-269"></span></p>
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<p>“We gave the insurgent Democrats millions of dollars worth of air<br />
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time, fake-but-accurate reporting, and the deadliest editorials we<br />
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could write,” he continued, “but their popular support in-country just wasn’t what we expected.”</p>
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<p>Efforts to isolate and discredit the rogue theocratic regime of<br />
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George “Chimpy” Bush in the international arena have been more<br />
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successful, the press spokesman said. “The U.N. is completely with<br />
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our program on that one,” he said, also citing moves by lawmakers<br />
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in Belgium and elsewhere to have Bush arrested and charged with<br />
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war crimes should he enter their jurisdiction.</p>
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<p>While there is some resistance to the regime in the urbanized<br />
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Northeast, the Bushites’ strong base of support in the tribal<br />
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provinces of the South and Midwest has been sufficient to keep them in<br />
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power. “Despite frequent overflights,” the spokesman admitted “we<br />
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know almost nothing about conditions there.”</p>
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<p>Faulty intelligence has been a continuing theme in the press’s<br />
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failure to achieve its policy goals. Critics charge that expert<br />
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evaluations have been routinely distorted or suppressed to further a<br />
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preconceived agenda, reading to major embarrassments like the<br />
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Rathergate scandal, false allegations of Koran-flushing at Guantanamo,<br />
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and erroneous reports of cannibalism in the New Orleans Superdome.</p>
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<p>In the wake of these failures, a rising tide of anti-press<br />
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sentiment is making its choices more difficult. Fearing to venture<br />
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from its limousines and air-conditioned hotels in the Blue State Zone,<br />
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the press seems increasingly prone to live in a bubble, with wishful<br />
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thinking substituting for a clear grasp of facts on the ground.</p>
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<p>In this atmosphere, outright fabrications like those at the heart<br />
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of the the Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair scandals have become all<br />
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too common, and led to the tragic downfall of at least one major editor.<br />
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Despite this, calls for “reality-based” reporting have gone largely<br />
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unheeded by a media establishment insistent on its ideological vision<br />
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of a better future.</p>
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<p>Media planners have pinned most of their remaining hopes on the<br />
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2006 elections despite the disappointments of 2000 and 2004. “Those<br />
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elections didn’t come out the way we wanted,” a former CBS staffer<br />
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observed, “so they must have been rigged by at least the <a href='http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=154'>15% swing</a> we can deliver.<br />
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We’ll try harder next time.”</p>
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