Photo via The Inquisitr
Photo via The smear campaign initiated by former AIPAC spokesman Josh Block against critics of Israel at Democratic Party-linked organizations last year has had some effect. At times, Think Progress, the blog of the Center for American Progress, has taken out mentions of Israel in its posts, and also hired a PR firm associated with hawkish Jewish organizations. And MJ Rosenberg, while not fired, has left his post at Media Matters for America (MMFA), an organization that tracks right-wing media.
But MMFA as an organization isn’t backing down. The media watchdog group released an important report yesterday documenting how mainstream media is inflating the alleged threat from Iran and repeating mistakes made in the run-up to the Iraq War.
This type of report by MMFA was exactly the type of content Block complained about in an e-mail leaked to Salon.com. Block maintained that there is an “overwhelming and center-left conviction that Iran is nuclearizing.”
MMFA looked at recent reports (Nov. 2011-March 2012) on Iran’s nuclear program from ABC’s World News, CBS’ Evening News, and NBC’s Nightly News. The organization found that 31% of network news coverage “suggested or left unchallenged suggestions that nuclear weaponization in Iran is imminent.” The report also found that 24% of stories “misleadingly brought up Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during discussion of the country’s nuclear program.”
The fact is that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon–something that the International Atomic Energy Agency, US intelligence and Israeli intelligence concur on. “What [U.S.] intelligence reports found and continue to find is the same thing the IAEA report found, which is that Iran had a concerted nuclear weapons program up until 2003, and shut that program down,” Jamal Abdi, the policy director for the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), told me early this year in an interview.
And the mentions of Ahmadinejad, whose face is sure to scare Americans, are also misleading. Harvard’s Stephen Walt explained:
He has little or no influence over Iran’s national security policy, his power has been declining sharply in recent months, and Supreme Leader Ali Khameini — who does make the key decisions — has repeatedly said that nuclear weapons are contrary to Islam
Here are MMFA’s key findings:
31 percent of stories on ABC’s World News, CBS’ Evening News, and NBC’s Nightly News suggested or left unchallenged suggestions that nuclear weaponization in Iran is imminent.
24 percent of stories misleadingly brought up Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during discussion of the country’s nuclear program.
World News most often suggested imminent nuclear weaponization in Iran (45 percent of its stories).
Nightly News most often invoked Ahmadinejad during segments on Iranian nuclear issues (33 percent of its reports).
No wonder 7 in 10 Americans believe Iran already has a nuclear weapon.
Actually, while the US National Intelligence Estimate claims that Iran HAD investigated building nuclear weapons prior to 2003, the IAEA has said that they never found that to be true either. In 2009, when the Right and Israel were accusing IAEA head Elbaradei of “covering up for Iran” by “censoring” IAEA reports, the IAEA specifically said: “With respect to a recent media report, the IAEA reiterates that it has no concrete proof that there IS OR HAS BEEN a nuclear weapon programme in Iran.”
The IAEA specifically said that the allegations — the “Alleged Studies” which now are called “Possible Military Dimensions” in IAEA reports issued under the new IAEA head Amano, have NOT been verified. According to Elbaradei’s memoirs, one of the key documents that came from Israel (about “neutron initiators” or nuclear detonators) was such an obvious forgery that he simply returned it to the Israelis with a chuckle. That document was then reproduced by the Times of London. When the commentators to the Times site noted some problems with the document — it was typed using Arabic rather than Farsi fonts — the Times (Oliver Kamm) admitted that they had “retyped” the document themselves. This became known as the “Kamm Scam”. Google it.
RE: “And the mentions of Ahmadinejad, whose face is sure to scare Americans, are also misleading. . . ” ~ Kane
MY COMMENT: How much longer will Ahmadinejad be President of Iran? Something like 18 months (August of next year). And then he is not eligible to run for another term!
Have you noticed that after obsessing for years over the boogeyman Ahmadenijad and his supposed “wipe Israel off the map”* comment, the hasbara is now seamlessly shifting to an obsession with the “mad mullah” boogeyman Khamenei and his supposedly über-duplicitous “taqiyya”**!
In other words, just as they did in the case of Iraq, the hasbarists will always “fix the facts around the policy” (to borrow a phrase from the Downing Street memo) that they are pursuing (the bomb, bomb, bombing of Iran in this instance).
* SEE: Did Ahmadinejad really say Israel should be ‘wiped off the map’? ~ by Glenn Kessler, 10/05/11 – http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/did-ahmadinejad-really-say-israel-should-be-wiped-off-the-map/2011/10/04/gIQABJIKML_blog.html
** SEE: Iran’s Forbidden Nukes and the Taqiya Lie, by Juan Cole, Informed Comment, 4/16/12 – http://www.juancole.com/2012/04/irans-forbidden-nukes-and-the-taqiya-lie.html
P.S. I will be so effing happy (not really) when the Corporate/Mainstream media no longer has the boogeyman Ahmadenijad to kick around, and begins following the example of the professional hasbarists in demonizing the “new and improved” mad mullah boogeyman Khamenei!