The Libyan War
Similarly, the editorialists at the Times and the Post have been at the forefront of demanding regime change in Libya, repeatedly urging President Barack Obama to support anti-Gaddafi rebels with close-combat attack aircraft for mowing down Libyan troops.
Those opinions also have spilled over into biased coverage in the news columns. Both newspapers have treated Libya's alleged role in downing Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 as another "flat fact" when there is strong doubt among many people who have followed that case that Libya had anything to do with the terrorist attack.
It is true that a special Scottish court in 2001 convicted Libyan agent Ali al-Megrahi for the bombing -- while acquitting a second Libyan -- but the case against Megrahi was falling apart in 2009 before he was released on humanitarian grounds because he had been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer.
In retrospect, the court's verdict in 2001 appears to have been more a political compromise than an act of justice. One of the judges told Dartmouth government professor Dirk Vandewalle about "enormous pressure put on the court to get a conviction."
After the testimony of a key witness was discredited, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission agreed in 2007 to reconsider Megrahi's conviction out of a strong concern that it was a miscarriage of justice. However, under more political pressure, the review was proceeding slowly in 2009 when Scottish authorities agreed to release Megrahi on medical grounds.
Megrahi dropped his appeal in order to gain an early release in the face of the cancer diagnosis, but that doesn't mean he was guilty. He has continued to assert his innocence and an objective press corps would reflect the serious doubts regarding his conviction.
However, the news columns of the Times continue to treat Libya's guilt in the Lockerbie case as an indisputable fact.
Yet, it's a safe bet that if you inserted the name of a U.S. ally in place of Libya, the Times would have relegated the Megrahi conviction to the loony bin of conspiracy theories or at least stuck it in the category of gross miscarriages of justice.
But, it seems, the American people must be forever prepped with reasons to justify using U.S. military force to right some perceived wrong and take out some designated "bad guy."
While there's no question that plenty of reasons exist to disapprove of the various "strong men" in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world, selective outrage is the essence of effective propaganda. Putting a harsh spotlight on one person or country -- while leaving similar situations elsewhere in the dark -- allows the ratcheting up or down of anger and tensions.
In a healthy democracy, independent news organizations would play a corrective role, showing skepticism toward the Official Line and questioning Washington's motives as one would those of any interested party.
Instead -- for much of the past three-plus decades -- the Post, the Times and other U.S. news outlets have been jockeying with each other to demonstrate the greatest "patriotism," the strongest condemnation of America's "enemies," and a remarkable gullibility toward propaganda generated by U.S. and Israeli policymakers.
Though it's true that individual American journalists have faced career retribution for stepping out of line from the Official Line, the pattern of high-level media bias has become so clear for so long that one has to conclude that the Post, the Times and many other news outlets are not just being coerced into serving as propaganda vehicles but are doing so willingly.
The obvious conclusion is that many senior news executives share the world view of the neoconservatives, thus giving those war hawks enduring influence in the power centers of Washington even when the sitting U.S. president may not be one of their own.
For the New York Times and the Washington Post, it may seem like the smart play to continue competing for the status of neocon flagship publication. However, like the ill-fated ocean-liners -- Titanic and Lusitania -- the Times and the Post may be ignoring other risks around them as they steam ahead, compromising their journalistic credibility.
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