Without discounting any of these conclusions, I think it's necessary to add another explanation for the apparent success of Petraeus' PR push: The media, in some cases out of incompetence and in others by design, helped him get away with it, and indeed actively enabled it.
If you step back and survey the totality of media's performance this summer on the Iraq debate, it becomes a good deal clearer just how awful it's all been -- and just how complicit these failings were in helping to shift the debate:
(1) Big news orgs repeatedly twisted the words of Democrats who had returned from Iraq to make their assessments sound more positive than they were.
....
(2) Big news orgs shifted the definition of the success of the surge from a political goal to a military one.
....
(3) Many news organizations gave tons of coverage to outside experts who said the surge is working, while giving little to none to people who said it wasn't.
....
(4) Multiple news outlets repeatedly and falsely described the September Iraq assessment as representing the sole judgment of Petraeus, echoing White House propaganda.
....
(5) News orgs and pundits are now baselessly asserting that the White House is "confident" that it will "win" the September showdown with Dems over Iraq.
Funny how that keeps happening, and no one in the "free press" ever seems to have a comprehensive explanation for any of it, nor their own individual responsibilities to repudiate and counter such behavior.
Why we are where we are is no mystery; why we allow it to persist is the real puzzle. Can't wait for the post-Labor Day onslaught of Petraeus' squinted successmanship, and the endless sniffing of Lonesome Rhodes' wrinkly ass, which I hear is a heady combination of English Leather and Preparation H. Anything to sustain the hallowed narrative until the next sweeps week.
No comments:
Post a Comment