Category: Media Beat column

This week began with the New York Times noting that "all of Washington is consumed with debate over the direction of the war in Iraq." The debate — long overdue — is a serious blow to the war makers in Washington, but the U.S. war effort will go on for years more unless the antiwar…

The huge gap between Tehran and Washington has widened in recent months. Top officials of Iran and the United States are not even within shouting distance. The styles of rhetoric differ, but the messages in both directions are filled with hostility. While visiting Iran’s capital in early summer, during the home stretch of the presidential…

A lot of media outlets are now scrutinizing some of the lies told by the Bush administration before the invasion of Iraq. Yet the same news organizations are bypassing their own key roles in the marketing of those lies. A case in point is the New York Times. On Saturday, hours after the indictment of…

While indictment fever gripped the Washington press corps this month, the president’s spin doctor was incapacitated. An ailing Karl Rove could not help the Republican search for a media cure. With temperature rising, the political physician was in no position to cure himself or anyone else. Now, a media siege is underway at the White…

Many politicians and pundits have told us that “Iraq is not Vietnam.” Certainly, any competent geographer would agree. Substantively, the histories of Iraq and Vietnam are very different. And the dynamics of U.S. military intervention in the two countries — while more similar than the American news media generally acknowledge — are far from identical.…