Toronto Star; TALKING TURKEY ABOUT A `FREE' PRESS

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Toronto Star  Nov. 30, 2003. 01:00 AM

TALKING TURKEY ABOUT A `FREE' PRESS
        ANTONIO ZERBISIAS

Let me say this straight up: I am not so cynical that I don't believe U.S. 
President George W. Bush wasn't sincerely farklempt when he talked turkey 
with the boys in Baghdad on Thanksgiving. Still, his talk of freedom 
struck me as gobbledygook.

"By helping the Iraqi people become free, you're helping change a troubled 
and violent part of the world," Bush said, to the cheers of the troops who 
are "helping to build a peaceful and democratic country in the heart of 
the Middle East..."

Gobbledygook because Bush and his administration callously disregard one 
of the most basic freedoms of all, and that's freedom of the press.

That the corporate media appear to happily go along with this curtailment 
and blatant manipulation of the press is even more shocking. But none of 
it is surprising especially given the latter's willingness to be embedded 
with the former in order to win regulatory reforms that will allow the 
media behemoths to beef up some more.

That said, to rail against how Bush's well-planned photo op dominated the 
news would be a waste of time and paper. Even the most apathetic couch 
potato would have had a hard time missing the story with the video played 
and replayed more often than that of Michael Jackson's arrest the week 
before. That it will show up in Bush's next campaign commercial is a 
given. That the anchors were giddy with excitement over having something 
else to report on besides the parade and 
what-to-do-with-your-holiday-leftovers features was obvious. That the 
coverage was almost uniformly uncritical was, sadly, almost to be 
expected, considering the record so far.

(To be fair, everybody was caught off guard and so the usual 
suspects/pundits probably couldn't be found to be booked or quoted. Not 
that there are many usual suspects/pundits who are critical but, like I 
said, I am trying to be fair here.)

The bottom line is, the Bush people lied L-I-E-D about everything, 
including misinforming the press about what the First Family would be 
eating on Thanksgiving Day.

Okay, fine. Security, surprise, stealth, safety, whatever.

But why were some reporters included by the White House and not others? 
How come an editor at Fox News, the administration's most rah-rah news 
operation, had advance word when no other editors did? And why is it that 
a president who refuses to acknowledge the dead and the wounded so readily 
exploits the still, for now alive?

As Joe Lockhart, former spokesperson for ex-president Bill Clinton, told 
the Washington Post: "There's no way to do this kind of trip if it's 
broadcast in advance, for security reasons. My problem with this is not 
that he misled the press. This is a president who has been unwilling to 
provide his presence to the families who have suffered, but thinks nothing 
of flying to Baghdad to use the troops there as a prop."

And the media go along, after raising nary a peep about how the Pentagon, 
after banning coverage of the returning "transfer tubes" (a.k.a. body 
bags), now forbids journalists from getting close to funerals at Arlington 
National Cemetery. They're restricted to a distant, roped-off area from 
which nothing can be heard. This after a Pentagon spokesperson said, "The 
media can get a better, more complete understanding of the person who has 
passed by attending and covering funeral services as opposed to coffins 
arriving aboard an air station."

Whaaaa?

But, let's leave the administration aside since, for political expediency, 
many a lie has been told. So what about the press? What about the stories 
they're not telling here? Consider:

 Last week, Richard Perle, a member of U.S. Defence Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld's policy board, told a London audience that he thought the attack
on Iraq was illegal.

 The Guardian reported him saying that international law "stood in the way 
of doing the right thing," and it "would have required us to leave Saddam 
Hussein alone."

To my knowledge, no U.S. media organization picked this up.