dirtpoorchris

Was the media complicit in its fear of the war drumming administration when we first committed to the Iraq war 'scary things'? I feel that a-holes used our patriotism against us to use us to enable greedy bastards.
How can you ignore enabling the nullification of possible questions that may need to be asked? I want to finally know if we got taken by the best pretending to be retarded.

news + public affairs player: video

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America. God is wearing black.

Scorpion89

Far from it if anything they were/have been against the war.

JW Frogen

I think the media (or at least the television media) just picked up on the simplest narrative, WMD and the rift between the US and France. The democratization agenda, stated way before the war or the other strategic arguments against Saddam was never seriously discussed by the media.

Media people don't like to think too hard. That is why they love Twitter.

G.I. Joe

Whatever it was, I'm glad it worked. We've set up a democracy in the heart of the Middle East! Who'da thunk it?

Fiddytree

Part of the problem is that the media has an interest in covering what ever developments occur, and if the United States is about to go to war, it wants a piece of the action. Long disappointed by the rights given to them by previous administrations, they had hoped that the W. Bush administration would grant them more access to cover the war, which they were able to receive.

Tools had also played an important part in coverage and the desire to cover the developing story. The telecommunications industry had exploded with the rise of the internet and continued development of satellite reliance to push audio and video. Now they could cover the story as it developed with technology that to be brutally honest, was about on par with most low quality compression rates at that time (perhaps even subpar to the most basic youtube video when youtube first started). The media was not shy at promoting the new gadgets, because any observer of the war via the 24 hour news networks were being fed live video that while not particularly exciting on its own, was made exciting by the reporter's commentary which would try to explain to the viewer both the oppenness of the administration and the wonders of the technology they were seeing on their television screens.

Many people say the media was against the war, which to certain extents is both true and untrue (some voices were incredibly anti-war, while others may have been on the other side), but when it came to the coverage of the invasion itself, the media truly loved to do the job they were doing. It was no secret, they did not bury the interest with language, they truly were amazed and impressed with themselves and the era they lived in.

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"Facing the issue means admitting what, in our zeal for new programs, we usually ignore: There are inherent limits to what can be accomplished by large hierarchical organizations"-James Q. Wilson, 1967

sazerac

At first the media supported the war in Iraq just like the general population did. Maybe about 3 months after the invasion that changed because of not finding any WMDs.

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rock n' roll.... god bless america

G.I. Joe

Are you kidding me? The night of the invasion CNN had Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine on talking about how Bush didn't care about soldiers. The mainstream media was liberal before the Iraq War and they will be long after, until it runs them out of business.

tryreading

Optimist, aren't you? I think you speak too soon.

G.I. Joe

I saw many things over there to be optimistic about. You are right, it is too early to tell if it will ultimately hold, but what has been accomplished so far is nothing short of amazing.

sazerac

The media was against the war yet 79% of Americans supported it at the beginning? At the same time Bush's approval was about the same.

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rock n' roll.... god bless america