|
Book
Review: Weapons Of Mass Deception, by Danny Schechter
(courtesy of Coldtype.net)
There
were two wars going on in Iraq – one was fought
with armies of soldiers, bombs and fearsome military
force. The other was fought alongside it with cameras,
satellites, armies of journalists and propaganda techniques.
One war was rationalized as an effort to find and
disarm WMDs – Weapons of Mass Destruction; the
other was carried out by even more powerful WMD’s,
Weapons of Mass Deception.
The
TV networks in America considered their non-stop around-the-clock
coverage their finest hour, pointing to the use of
embedded journalists and new technologies that permitted
viewers to see a war up close for the first time.
Critics
of the coverage, such as veteran journalist and media
watcher Danny Schechter, a former ABC and CNN producer,
consider much of the U.S. media complicit in the promoting
and cheerleading for a war in which some of the reporting
was sanitized, staged and suppressed. Schechter, author
of Media Wars: News at a Time of Terror, The More
You Watch The Less You Know and News Dissector, brings
an insider’s knowledge based on 30 years in journalism
with an outsiders perspective to critiquing media
coverage. Throughout the war, as he describes, he
was “self-embedded” at Mediachannel.org,
the world’s largest on-line media issues network,
writing a 3000 word daily “dissection” of
the global coverage based on a wide range of source.
Now
that coverage, including articles and essays published
elsewhere, appears with a new introduction and hard-hitting
analysis as Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception, a
book length study of the new merger between the military
and the media. The book includes reports written in
late May, 2003.
“It
is important for readers to assess these arguments
before our memories fade and the Bush Administration
changes the subject,” says Schechter. “We
rushed this book into print online so it can contribute
to the continuing debate about the war and its impact.
Until now, only the government is being scrutinized.
It’s urgent that we also assess media coverage.”
Links:
Mediaman interviews Danny Schechter
Coldtype.net
MediaChannel
Mediaman: Online Shop
|
