The Media's Big Bet On Iraq...

My take on why the media is so biased against Bush and Iraq is that most of the senior reporters and executives made their careers on the Watergate story, Vietnam and on President Nixon's fall and subsequent resignation. This, to them, is a winning formula that they think that they can use to clip a sitting president's wings and attack a war that is and may prove to be highly unpopular, although, to me it appears to be a necessary war.

So, in order to achieve these goals, the press must minimize the positive reporting and report the wholly negative while closing the box or limiting what the President can do. Iraq will make many careers in the press if it is handled right.

However, the press has now painted themselves into a corner and the storyline of Iraq being an unwinnable war and unnecessary may be come a big problem for them if it doesn't play out this way. An already somewhat skeptical public has invested much in what the press is telling us on a day-to-day basis. How would the public feel or react if one day, it all works out as President Bush outlined February 6. 2003. A victory or building successes in Iraq will be a source of problems for the press and their Democratic Party wards. Success in Iraq will injure many reporters and senior executives careers and reputations. Belmont Club sums this position up nicely...

The problem with using words to trump reality is that it wagers everything on a monumental bluff. The mesmerist must carry all before him or be humiliated. A King must be obeyed or lose the throne. There is no middle ground. Personally I think the repeated conjury of the master-spell of 'Vietnam' and the endless repetition of "we have been defeated" is a strained attempt to achieve what used to be accomplished effortlessly; almost as a background process. Now the spell is being used altogether too often to be convincing, like a lion-tamer who must repeatedly shout at the mountain of snarling flesh before him to sit down. One of the characteristics of the collapse of an illusion is the suddenness with which it comes. The Soviet Union; the EU superstate; the notion of an advanced, enlightened and progressive France, were like Atlantis separated from glory and oblivion by a single night and day. I would be careful about Vietnam because the '60s, like Vaudeville, may never come again.

Furthermore, the press no longer has the luxury of the single voice, where other large news organization with similar stakes fact-checked them. Maybe then it was a gentleman's business but it is no longer. The press is now thoroughly fact-checked and with strong rebuttals from cable and citizen journalist bloggers. They can no longer paint pictures with out other information coming to light that may contradict that picture and definitely cannot present hoaxes such as the fake Air National Guard memos peddled by Dan Rather and Mary Mapes with out being caught leading to the destruction of their careers. They are truly in a box and may have to resort to actually reporting news and doing a good job and bury their agenda journalism.

The press has largely lost my trust, a long time ago, particularly due to the antics of the New York Times. I disliked the paper before it was fashionable to do so.