From the Asia Times story
Why all is quiet on the American home front
By Sreeram Chaulia

" Aware of the media's capability and propensity to expose the ugliness of the Iraq war, the Bush administration left no stone unturned to co-opt and muzzle it. US citizens are being kept in an uninformed Orwellian condition through such mechanisms as "embedded journalists", the "code of conduct" on reportage imposed by the former US administrator in Iraq, L Paul Bremer, and the Department of Defense's censorship of print and audiovisual media.

As the Cable News Network's Christiane Amanpour confessed, media powerhouses went along with draconian state encroachments on their freedom and even practiced shameful "self-censorship" to please political masters.

Unless the true face of the US occupation of Iraq is unveiled to the larger American public (Abu Ghraib being the tip of the iceberg), the passion and relentlessness of the anti-Vietnam War era cannot be realized. To say that new-age technologies such as the Internet are enough to overcome weaknesses in the traditional media misses the point that common Americans do not search for critical stories on the war on Iraq without being initially prodded and startled by newspapers, radio stations and television. In a media-saturated environment, the Internet is merely a secondary tool when it comes to politics and news. "





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This story was not written by the Blog Author, but rather by Sreeram Chaulia, a writer for The Asia Times. The Blog Author cannot claim any responsibility for the content of the article. Its presentation here is strictly to bring attention to it from people who do not normally frequent the website of The Asia Times. I (the blog author) sincerely apologize for any misunderstanding.