2003 Media Follies!

Geov Parrish, WorkingForChange.com

http://www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=17475

The year 2004 will be a particularly critical one in the modern history
of our nation and our world. The chain of events set in motion by the
U.S. invasion of Iraq is likely to take a definitive turn; beyond that,
the American public will be asked to pass judgment on four years’
performance of one of the most radical regimes in our country’s history.
Understanding what’s actually happening has never been more important —
and spinmeisters’ efforts to obscure what’s actually happening will be
stronger and more technologically savvy than ever. It’s time to get
smart.

To that end, enter 2004 with our annual list of the past year’s most
overhyped and underreported — and misreported — stories. Remember,
they told us they’d lie to us. They were telling the truth.

Most Overrated Stories of the Year:

Saving Jessica Lynch. On the basis of its subsequent media saturation —
books and TV instamovie included — the bogus story of Jessica Lynch’s
"rescue" narrowly outpolls the toppling of Saddam’s statue as the most
sickening episode of government lying for political gain in recent
memory. (The "official" story of Saddam’s capture may yet prove to join
this elite company.)

Both the statue and Lynch stories were easily and quickly discredited in
foreign media — and, eventually, in U.S. media as well — but remain
iconic markers of the "heroic" Iraq invasion in the minds of many
Americans. In the case of the statue, what was presented as the joyous,
spontaneous post-victory celebration of a huge Baghdad crowd was quickly
revealed by non-network witnesses and wide-angle lenses to be a group of
at most 150 Iraqis — probably paid by the Americans — who with the
help of U.S. troops on site pulled down a statue of Saddam for waiting
TV cameras in an otherwise nearly empty plaza.

The Lynch episode was even more cynical, particularly for its crass
exploitation of a young soldier who had gone through the undeniably
harrowing ordeal of being a POW. But she was captured after being
injured in a vehicular accident — not, as the first Pentagon claimed,
after a heroic firefight. And the videotape of her "rescue" from an
unguarded hospital that she could freely walk away from involved the
filming of an elaborate Hollywood-style commando raid against an
off-camera foe that turned out to be completely fictitious. Both
episodes were important reminders that sometimes the camera does lie —
depending on who’s holding it.

Arnold Schwarzenegger runs for governor. Never before has a political
neophyte gained high political office by waging a campaign through
appearances on E! and Jay Leno. Let’s hope it never happens again. (But
it probably will.)

Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant. Which is worse — a sports superstar,
on trial for felony rape, who gets huge ovations in arenas across the
country because of the charges against him, or the dare-you-not-to-look
spectacle of a trial examining the alleged perversions of an
over-the-hill music superstar who is now barely recognizably human, let
alone black or male?

The economic recovery. Also on the 2002 list. This year it moved from
the realm of projecting a fictitious recovery from a highly selective
(and dubious) reading of economic tea leaves, to projecting a fictitious
permanent recovery from a highly selective (and dubious) reading of the
tea leaves of what is at best a temporary respite from misery. And what
the hell is the point of a "jobless recovery," anyway?

Most Important Underreported Stories of the Year

The Bush tax cuts have flopped. The flip side of the "recovery" stories.
This has also been on the list the last two years. But it’s worth a
return engagement because most of the administration’s economic claims
— and assumptions for future planning — are grossly fictional. Never
has an administration been so greedy for its own economic interests, or
lied so much about it. We’ll be stuck with the bill for decades.

Corporate corruption continues to run amok. Bush’s 2002 "reforms" were a
farce. The problem isn’t just the lack of regulatory enforcement — it’s
the entire system.

Health care in America in crisis. Bush’s Medicare bill largely served to
make wealthy drug companies richer still; the so-called "Patient’s Bill
of Rights" was a meaningless farce. Meanwhile, even a relatively minor
health problem can destroy the life savings of the nearly 50 million
uninsured, and the far larger numbers whose insurance works great so
long as we don’t get sick. The real story here is the countless
parasites unnecessarily making money in our health care system, and how
politicians would rather cater to them than help solve a crisis that,
sooner or later, affects each of us.

Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton. Neither man has a chance for the
Democratic nomination. Yet both Kucinich and Sharpton have generated
fiercely loyal followings as the only two candidates in a crowded field
with the clarity and guts to challenge fundamental assumptions of the
Bush domestic and foreign policy agendas. Howard Dean’s successful
candidacy wouldn’t be possible without this pair on his flank, making
him look "more reasonable" even as corporate media ignore or ridicule
their campaigns.

The Taliban making a comeback. Bush’s pledges to not abandon Afghanistan
turned out to be a cruel joke. Sure, our troops are still there —
they’re the only thing keeping CIA man Hamid Karzai in "power," albeit
only in the capital city of Kabul and only during daylight hours.
Elsewhere, the same old brutal warlords are running the show, stealing,
murdering and getting rich from record poppy harvests. The Americans
have so little influence they’ve resorted to quietly working with
"moderate" elements of the Taliban — who, with the patience of any
society that has a history of several thousand years, are getting
stronger again in the mountains.

The peace movement was right about Iraq. The fact that the Bush
Administration was lying about virtually every justification for
invading Iraq was something any inquiring reporter could have exposed
months before the invasion began. No ties to Al-Qaeda. No weapons of
mass destruction. No danger to U.S. security. Dated, wildly exaggerated,
or simply forged "intelligence." An invasion that was illegal under any
and every conceivable legal authority.

The catastrophe that has been the U.S. administration of Iraq. Iraq’s
guerrilla resistance is not the work of Saddam Hussein, or foreign
fighters recruited by Al-Qaeda and the like. It’s the work of the
Americans — specifically, it wouldn’t exist except for the widespread
and steadily rising popular anger over the Americans’ ongoing, utter
failure to provide any of the services normally associated with
government. Eight months into U.S. rule, looting is so bad most Iraqis
won’t leave home after dark. Usually there’s no electricity to see by,
anyway, especially outside Baghdad. The U.S. occupiers have been
censoring Arab media, repressing the political parties they don’t like
— especially Shi’a fundamentalists — making widespread mass arrests
with no semblance of a judicial system or due process (and widespread
torture allegations), and murdering civilians seemingly at will and with
no fear of consequence. Far from instilling democratic values,
Washington has done everything possible to avoid them — from canceling
promised free elections to blocking the use of U.N. and other
technocrats with experience in building and nurturing civil society to
not doing that work itself.

Privatization and corporate looting of Iraq. Iraq is literally being
auctioned off, mostly to well-connected American companies like
Halliburton and Bechtel. Few Iraqis have any of the new currency, let
alone jobs — those are all going to Americans or to Kuwaitis, Saudis,
or Southeast Asian nationals. By the time Iraq is given the chance
(albeit heavily rigged in D.C.’s favor) to "rule itself," the country
will look a lot like those houses the Grinch visited before Christmas —
except that these Grinches will never, ever get bigger hearts and give
the stuff back.

Israel’s apartheid wall. Longer and taller than Berlin’s, it’s a
flagrantly illegal gambit to reduce Palestine to Bantustans; meanwhile,
the routine brutalization and humiliation of ordinary Palestinians
continues to grow. This, not Iraq, is the conflict upon which future
world peace depends, and Washington’s role in worsening it has been
critical. Why so little attention?

Africa, Africa, Africa. So much is flying under U.S. media radar, it’s
hard to know where to start — from Mugabe’s terrorizing of Zimbabwe to
AIDS to the renewed national and regional depredations of Nigeria, a
country effectively run by the likes of Shell and Chevron, and whichever
local generals have the franchise this week. But as always the place to
start is Central Africa — where a brutal, decade-long war has now
killed a staggering four million or more people, replete with
atrocities, civilian massacres, torture, sexual slavery, and lots and
lots of U.S.-made weaponry. The war’s raison d’etre? The mineral wealth
of the eastern Congo, which includes several rare minerals used in the
production of computer screens, keyboards, and chips. Prominent among
the numerous American companies getting rich by paying "rebel" armies to
take over mining regions are Halliburton and Bechtel.

The collapse of the ’Washington consensus.’ U.S. media have given a bit
of attention to the hypocrisy of the Bush Administration pushing a free
trade agenda while blithely continuing its price supports for domestic
steel and agribusiness. (Somehow, the arms trade never makes this list.)
But the bigger story is that despite Washington’s enormous fiscal and
military clout, and the sobering example of Iraq for any who dare step
out of line, fewer and fewer countries are buying that "free trade"
bullshit. Since 2000, popular movements in nearly every country in South
America have determined who governs the country; this year, protesters
forced Bolivia’s president into exile over a natural gas export scheme.
Lula, Brazil’s newly elected, left-leaning president, has formed (along
with India and, increasingly, China) a caucus that is standing up to
Bush demands for the right to loot the global South. Both the WTO talks
in Cancun and FTAA talks in Miami broke down this fall. Popular outrage
over decades of destroyed economies isn’t letting the elites who run
these countries acquiesce to Washington. Now that’s democracy in action.

Bush v. Constitution. There have been no publicly revealed terror
attacks foiled on U.S. soil since 9/11 — only the trumped-up cases of a
few homegrown Muslim fantasy warriors. But state power and erosion of
civil liberties and the Bill of Rights continues to expand, in the name
of 9/11 and "terrorism." A leaked draft of a proposed "PATRIOT II" bill
caused a public uproar early in the year. A major provision was then
snuck through Congress anyway — the right to seize and examine any
business’s records, no warrant, judge or jury needed. Guantanamo’s
prisons continue to expand, allegations of torture and border
brutalizations keep cropping up in foreign media, and John Ashcroft
still has a job. The good news: Increasingly, courts are telling Bush to
back off. The bad news: If reelected, Bush will likely get to pick two
or three new Supreme Court judges.

U.S. remains biggest terrorist nation in the world. We’re the largest
arms exporter. We’re funding the next generation of Saddams in places
like Pakistan and Uzbekistan. We ignore international treaties and laws
whenever we like. No combination of world powers has been able or
willing to hold this rogue state accountable for its transgressions. The
only force that can is the American public itself. In 2004, we’ll have
the chance. The essential first steps: Educating ourselves, seeking out
multiple alternative news sources, and making up our own minds. The
essential next steps: Use that knowledge, spread that knowledge, and get
busy!

© 2004 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.