Who needs WMD when you've got MSM

Hands down, this is one of the most important documentaries I’ve seen on the media’s power to distort the news beyond recognition. Using one example after another, Amy Goodman masterfully demonstrates that what you see through the mainstream media is not what you get.

Why don’t they [the MSM] put doctors on their payroll? That way you can have the general talking about the bomb that Lockheed Martin made and the kind of plane that dropped it and whether it was precision guided or not and then you can have the doctor talking about the effects of the bomb – you know not for or against the war – just how a cluster bomb enters your skin, and what it means if your foot is blown off if you’re lucky and you’re not killed. So, why not have doctors and generals at least?

But, this is just to show how low the media has gone. You have not only FOX, but MSNBC and NBC that’s owned by General Electric, one of the major nuclear weapons manufacturers in the world . . . you have MSNBC and NBC as well as FOX titling their coverage [of the war], taking the name of what the Pentagon calls the invasion of Iraq -Operation Iraqi Freedom.

That’s what the Pentagon does and you expect that. They research the most effective, propagandistic name to call their operation. But, for the media to name their coverage what the Pentagon calls it – every day seeing Operation Iraqi Freedom. You have to ask – if this were state media, how would it be any different?

My only criticism is that it gives viewers the impression that the government runs the media – when in fact it’s the other way around. The media is the corporate arm that runs the government, by manufacturing consent.

A few months ago, I said that the mainstream media could be our worst enemy. I was wrong. Clearly, it is.