Realm Wave Rider: Control the Media, Part II

As if it's not enough that the media is directed on what to say/print and what not to, when an item is reported, the information goes unchallenged and is presented as reliable and factual.

Here's an example of how damaging information, in this case compromising the credibility of the Bush administration's Iraq message, gets coverage outside the US, yet no coverage in major news outlets within the US.

The Pentagon publishes a report on the findings of the "accidental" killing of Italian secret agent Nicola Calipari and wounding of kidnapped journalist Giuliana Sgrena in Baghdad. Several areas are blacked-out electronically. Then someone finds that by selecting the entire text of the document, copying, and pasting into another document one can actually read the blacked-out portions.

Contained withtin the document is some disturbing information about the number of attacks on US forces in Iraq. And, so far today, none of this has made the main media outlets. There is still news about the Italian dispute with the results of the findings, but nothing about how the stability and progress in Iraq is not as positive as has been reported by the administration or the media.

From an article in Asia Times Online:

The uncensored Pentagon report at least allows the international public to know that there were no less than 15,527 attacks on the occupation forces from July 2004 to March 2005. In Baghdad alone, from November to March 12, there were 2,404 attacks. These numbers confirm that when US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his minions spin that the situation in Iraq is under control they are essentially lying. In the three months since the Iraqi elections there may have been fewer American casualties, but there were countless more assassination attempts against the so-called Iraqi security forces, all of them based on precise intelligence. Every day, there are at least 20 bomb attacks in Baghdad alone, and at least 60 throughout Iraq.

I guess if the American public never sees it in the major US outlets (e.g. CNN, Fox, USA Today, MSNBC, etc.), it must not be happening. If Americans continue to stick their collective heads in the sand, by not looking beyond the selective and biased "news" reported on American outlets, they will only have themselves to blame when the rest of the world responds.

Turn to objective, independent sources for news: