Some say the media is liberal; some say it’s corporate. The truth is, it's none of the above. Neither profit nor ideology drives the media. Anxiety is the real motivator. The media fears the possibility that a word, a phrase or a sentence might be construed as implying, suggesting, insinuating, or alluding to an opinion or value judgment that might offend our oligarchy. It has nothing to do with corporate ownership. The simple fact is that our media is as cowed by an increasingly authoritarian state as the rest of us.This phobia was illustrated by a story on page one of Monday’s New York Times, “Vienna Meeting on Arms Data Reignites Iran Nuclear Debate.”
It was indeed a frightening tale in which the chief United Nations nuclear inspector “laid out a trove of evidence that he said raised new questions about whether Iran had tried to design an atom bomb.”
The story goes on to tell us that “representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency were riveted by documents, sketches and even a video that appeared to come from Iran’s own military laboratories. The inspector said they showed work ‘not consistent with any application other than the development of nuclear weapons.’”Now reader is ready to scramble the pilots to nuke Iran’s nukes, because it appeares that December’s NIE concluding that Iran had suspended its Nuclear weapons in 2003 was wrong.
Then the reader bumps into this sentence buried in paragraph six of the story: “Last Monday’s presentation in Vienna did not contradict that (the NIE’s) conclusion, but disclosed many details of Iran’s past work on weapons design.”
O the horror of it! The NIE told us Iran suspended work on nuclear weapons in 2003, and now a meeting in Vienna reveals the shocking truth that Iran was actually working on them. If that isn’t enough to make us declare war on Iran, I don’t know what will.
I worked my way through college as a reporter on a small-town Indiana daily. There I was taught that when writing a story the lead was to contain the who, what, when, why and how that carried the greatest weight. If we covered a fire, we were expected to write about the fire, not about the flashing lights on the fire truck.
But that was decades ago. According to the Times, I should have written about the flashing lights. I confess, had I written the story for the Times I would have started with the fact that the data being presented was old news.
But, I guess that would have offended somebody.
