Over the course of the next two weeks, the New Iraq™ election propaganda machine is going to be shifted into high gear. That's a given. There will be very few negative stories coming from inside the country -- it matters not how many bombings, assassinations and street executions take place -- reports will hail Iraq as a bastion of democracy, and perhaps pave the pathway of public opinion for development of a U.S. exit strategy (if cut-and-run qualifies as a "strategery").
But how can anyone believe anything being reported from Iraq? Today, two weeks from now, or two years from now, the journalism profession has become so soiled from this sorrid chapter in history that I (and many others) will never be able to trust mainstream media reports again.
Robert Fisk, a Baghdad-based reporter for U.K.'s The Independent, files a piece from Baghdad that's mirrored on Counterpunch today. As Fisk notes, no major news organization will allow their reporters to travel anywhere in Iraq. So, journalists are defacto prisoners in the Green Zone, and reduced to spinning the latest Tass-style press release lies offered by the Occupation Propaganda Desk:
"The United States military couldn't be happier with this situation," a long-time American correspondent in Baghdad says. "They know that if they bomb a house of innocent people, they can claim it was a 'terrorist' base and get away with it. They don't want us roaming around Iraq and so the 'terrorist' threat is great news for them.
"They can claim they've shot 600 or 1,000 insurgents and we have no way of checking because we can't go to the cemetery or visit the hospitals because we don't want to get kidnapped and have our throats cut..."
Can pradikate for reports filed by Western journalists be far off?
