Media Wages War of Words with White House
Published Wed, Nov 29 2006 12:44 AM
Technorati Tags: News and Politics, War on Terror
The media has been calling the conflict in Iraq a civil war for months now. NBC and MSNBC insist on calling the conflict a civil war despite evidence to the contrary. The Washington Post claims to have made no policy, but their reporting seems to indicate that they want it to appear as if the situation is a civil war.
To people dying in the streets of Sadr City, it may be just semantics. But the White House fiercely resists the phrase out of fear of its impact in both Iraq and the United States. Defining it as civil war, some strategists worry, could accelerate the conflict and encourage Iraqi factions that remain on the sidelines to join the struggle. And acknowledging that it has become a civil war, they fear, could collapse the already weak support for the mission among Americans.
But the risk for the White House, analysts said, is that once again it will appear out of touch with reality over there and with public perception here at home. For months after the invasion of Iraq, the administration denied there was an insurgency. Then it resisted the notion that there was sectarian violence. Now polls show that about two-thirds of the American public think that Iraq is mired in civil war.
It could be that the reason for this continued escalation in terms has a lot to do with the story line being pushed by the media. The vast majority of media elites are registered Democrats. The Democrat party has long had an interest in weakening support for the war on terror among Americans.
Pushing the notion that the fighting, largely confined to Shiite terrorists and Sunni terrorists in parts of Baghdad is actually a civil war furthers that interest.
The issue of terminology has arisen periodically for months, especially since the February bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra touched off round after round of attacks between the once-dominant minority Sunnis and the majority Shiites who now control the government. The debate has flared more intensely in recent days amid the bloodiest assaults of the war in the Shiite slum of Baghdad known as Sadr City...
...
The decision by NBC News on Monday to use the term despite White House objections prompted a fresh examination by many in Washington about the nature of the conflict. As MSNBC began flashing the logo "Iraq: The Civil War," other news organizations staked out positions. The Los Angeles Times noted that it has been calling the violence a civil war since October. The New York Times said it will use the term, though sparingly. The Associated Press said it is still debating the issue, while The Washington Post has made no policy.
The recent behavior of the media enhances the notion that they have a vested interest in calling the violence in Iraq, which actually decreased during the month of November, a civil war. NBC and MSNBC have apparently decided that discrediting the war on terror is a good thing. The Los Angeles Times has been doing this for months.
The Associated Press has actually been seeking out fraudulent sources to further the impression that the violence is a civil war and that the Iraqi military is incompetent to handle the situation. Their recent story about 6 Sunni worshippers being burned alive has been pretty thoroughly debunked, and even keeps changing as new information comes to light.
It isn't the Iraqi government that appears to be under attack in the current violence. Rather it appears that the followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, a bunch of terrorists that had originally pledged to support the fledgling government after negotiating a truce with coalition forces and Sunni terrorists loyal to Saddam Hussein and his Baath party are fighting with each other.
And it appears that the White House is under a continued assault by the media. Not only a war of words over the terminology, but an actual campaign to discredit the administration.
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