Commentary and links relating to media coverage of war; both before, during, and after.
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William A. Dorman is Professor of Government at California State University, Sacramento, and has taught a course in War, Peace and the Mass Media since 1970.
Web Page
U.S. Foreign Policy Blog
E-Mail: dormanw at csus.edu
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War, Peace, and the Mass Media
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Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Abu Ghraib Accountability
Wall Street Journal
Editorial
April 27, 2005; Page A14
Blog editor's note: The Wall Street Journal never seems to tire of taking its colleagues in the press to task for harsh treatment of the U.S. military and/or U.S. behavior in the world. Today's editorial puts me in mind of its scolding of Raymond Bonner for his "credulous" reporting on the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador in 1981, a massacre which a forensics team would confirm eleven years later, a tale told in Mark Danner's book, The Massacre at El Mozote.
We'd have thought every American would be relieved to learn that 10 major inquiries, sworn statements from 37 high-level officials, and information gleaned from dozens of courts martial and criminal investigations have cleared most senior civilian and military leaders of wrongdoing in the Abu Ghraib scandal and other Iraq prisoner abuses. Instead, the latest Army report reaching this conclusion has induced further cries of whitewash.
This wailing says more about the accusers than about any facts that have emerged in the year since the scandal broke. The media and Congressional Democrats flogged the Abu Ghraib story for months throughout the 2004 election year, with a goal of stripping the Iraq War of moral authority and turning President Bush into another LBJ. But now that their worst chain-of-command conspiracy hypotheses haven't panned out, they refuse to admit it.
To read the full text, see The Wall Street Journal
3:56 PM
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