Here is a good look at how the corporate media really supports the troops. This piece by Steve Benson contrasts the media reception of the recent NYT op-ed by seven actual troops with the plaudits and exposure given to the two pro-war from the get go, Brookings shills from several weeks earlier.
Surely, given the vast coverage of the O’Hanlon/Pollack piece, the powerful perspective of these heroes would be immediately picked up everywhere, right? Wrong. Greg Sargent explained yesterday, that the op-ed “has been met with near-total silence.”
TPM intern Benjy Sarlin and I did an exhaustive hunt for coverage of this by the big news orgs. We only found one mention: CBS’ Bob Scheiffer brought it up in passing in an interview with John McCain yesterday. The only other news-org mentions came in Editor and Publisher, on MSNBC’s First Read blog, and on Time’s Swampland blog.
That’s all we could find. Nothing on CNN or any of the networks, no AP story, nothing on Reuters, nothing in any of the major papers. (If we missed anything, let us know at talk@talkingpointsmemo.com.) This is really staggering, particularly when you consider that this story has intense drama, too — one of the authors, the piece says, was “shot in the head” during preparation of the article and is being flown to a military hospital in the U.S. How the heck is this not newsworthy?
Notice this part too.
O’Hanlon and Pollack become media darlings, including benefiting from false assertions that they’re war “critics,” but seven members of the 82nd Airborne Division are derided — when they’re not ignored altogether
O'Hanlon and Pollack haven't been critics of the Iraq war, they've been supporters of it. For more on that read this post by Glenn Greenwald . With the corporate press, the lies chase the lies and the original lies are what are used to confirm themselves.
To read the experience of seven actual troops who saw what was happening in Iraq, here is the NYT op-ed.