Patriotismen i de amerikanska medierna

Bill Moyers visar i denna dokumentär hur mainstream medierna okritiskt kablade ut Bush-administrationens lögner till den amerikanska befolkningen månaderna innan Irak-kriget.

I dokumentären dyker bl a den (ö)kände Dan Rather upp och grinar i David Lettermans show efter elfte september attackerna och påstod sig bl a varit villig att ställa sig till förfogande bara presidenten kallat. Uppvisandet av den sortens dåraktiga patriotism som Rather ger uttryck för existerade i alla de större medierna. De som ifrågasatte och ställde frågor blev utfrysta eller anklagade för att vara opatriotiska och "Un-American".

In the run-up to war, skepticism was a rarity among journalists inside the Beltway. Journalist Bob Simon of 60 Minutes, who was based in the Middle East, questioned the reporting he was seeing and reading. "I mean we knew things or suspected things that perhaps the Washington press corps could not suspect. For example, the absurdity of putting up a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda," he tells Moyers. "Saddam…was a total control freak. To introduce a wild card like Al Qaeda in any sense was just something he would not do. So I just didn't believe it for an instant." The program analyzes the stream of unchecked information from administration sources and Iraqi defectors to the mainstream print and broadcast press, which was then seized upon and amplified by an army of pundits. While almost all the claims would eventually prove to be false, the drumbeat of misinformation about WMDs went virtually unchallenged by the media. THE NEW YORK TIMES reported on Iraq's "worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb," but according to Landay, claims by the administration about the possibility of nuclear weapons were highly questionable. Yet, his story citing the "lack of hard evidence of Iraqi weapons" got little play. In fact, throughout the media landscape, stories challenging the official view were often pushed aside while the administration's claims were given prominence. "From August 2002 until the war was launched in March of 2003 there were about 140 front page pieces in THE WASHINGTON POST making the administration's case for war," says Howard Kurtz, the POST's media critic. "But there was only a handful of stories that ran on the front page that made the opposite case. Or, if not making the opposite case, raised questions."