I'm going to harp on my belief that the Washington Post, which supported the Iraq war and showed editorial indifference to the Gaza slaughter, is playing a negative role in informing the American elite. Robert Parry, the former AP reporter who broke so many stories in Central America, says that the media attacks on Freeman weren't just chatter, but were significant, in driving the politicians to take their stands against him, and for Obama to crater:
Only after years of Bush’s catastrophes
did American voters push back, stripping the Republicans of
congressional control in 2006 and handing the Democrats the White House
in 2008.
But the neocons and
other rightists retain one important bastion of power: the U.S. news
media, which can roughly be divided between the right-wing media
infrastructure, from print to radio to TV to the Internet, and
mainstream journalism, which includes important pro-neocon outlets like
the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and The New Republic.
Now, that strength within the national news media is serving as the
neocons’ reserve army, launching counterattacks after its front-line
troops of the Bush years were routed.
By driving back the appointment of Chas Freeman, the neocons also have
made the point that they have no intention of surrendering to the
forces of “realism” or letting go their influence over the country’s
intelligence analysis.
