Greg Mitchell: Arianna's New Book Shows How Media Ignored 'Downing Street Memo'

Greg Mitchell

Arianna's New Book Shows How Media Ignored 'Downing Street Memo'



Arianna Huffington's new book, Right Is Wrong, should revive interest in numerous sins of omission and commission on the part of the mainstream media in the past few years. One episode -- dating from three years ago this month -- that I discuss briefly in my new book on Iraq and the media gets better play in her book.

You remember the Downing Street Memo? That formerly secret British document which revealed that almost a year before the attack on Iraq the British government had become convinced that the Bushites had "fixed" the intelligence to mislead everyone into supporting an invasion?

It became public and widely reported in the overseas press and on blogs in the U.S. (and at my own Editor & Publisher, one of the few MSM spots to cover it early on).

Arianna in her book contrasts that non-coverage in May with the massive attention lavished on the Natalee Holloway disappearance and the Michael Jackson child molesting trial. She even publishes a network-by-network scorecard.

For example, ABC News had nothing on the memo, 42 segments on Natalee, 121 pieces on Jacko. CBS News was even worse, while NBC did better (six whole segments on the memo). For News had 10 segments mentioning the memo -- but 148 on Natalee and 286 on Jacko.

snip...

Of course, nothing since then has either discredited the memo -- nor the view that the intelligence was, indeed, fixed.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/ariannas-new-book-shows-h_b_101207.html

...and we need them to fight and die for the empire...

I'm glad to hear people like Huffington and Mitchell reviving the DSM and the complicity of the m$m in not talking about it.

we're fighting a war discussed BEFORE or DURING a war, instead of the usual 10 years AFTER the war.

They were coached by the pentagon on what to present to the public.

-Hoot

were doing the Pentagon's bidding, after all.