You're Not Seeing The Big Picture...Manufactured Consent and the American Media Whenever the Administration is questioned about the the Iraq War, Rumsfeld, Bush, Powell, et al. respond with the following approach: First, they claim they are waiting for more information. After information has been confirmed (usually after another incident has occurred), they attempt to downplay the bad news by referring to the "Bigger Picture" of Coalition success in Iraq. The President himself frequently complains that the networks prefer to report sensational tragedies rather the less dramatic gradual improvements the administration claims are taking place throughout Iraq. When asked for specifics, they hem and haw, and let you know that they're privy to information they can't share due to "national security" concerns. Essentially, their position can be reduced to "We're winning--trust us". The problem with this is that we have a president unworthy of our trust. According to the Disabled American Veterans, the Big Picture is that the true cost of war is being systematically hidden from the American people--and it goes way beyond prohibiting pictures of body bags at Andrews Air Force Base. "...The media blackout extends to the legions of wounded who have returned from Iraq as well. Media stories on wounded troops often use Pentagon figures for those officially wounded in combat, numbering around 3,000. These numbers ignore the well over 7,000 troops who have been injured or made ill as a result of the war. According to the Disabled American Veterans, an additional 6,891 troops were medically evacuated between March 19, 2003 and Oct. 30, 2003, for everything from vehicle accidents to attempted suicides". Read the Article Does CBS report this? Did you hear this on NBC? CBS? FOX? Norman Solomon's Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (F.A.I.R.) did a study of coverage of the Iraq war, and the results are anything but surprising: "Overwhelmingly, the Iraq story was told through U.S. eyes, with 81 percent American sources and only 10 percent Iraqi...Despite criticism of the media by the Bush administration and its allies, U.S. TV news coverage of the Iraq situation continues to be dominated by government and military officials, according to a new study by FAIR. The few critics of military operations that find themselves on the nightly news broadcasts rarely question the war as a whole. Nightly network news reports largely focus on tactics and individual battles, with more substantial and often troubling issues surrounding the war, such as civilian casualties, rarely being reported. The study looked at 319 on-camera sources appearing in stories about Iraq on the nightly network newscasts--ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News--in the month of October 2003. Sources were coded by name, occupation, nationality, topic and network. Out of 319 sources, 244 (76 percent) were current or former government or military officials. Of these, 225 were from the United States, and a further nine were from the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. By allowing U.S. officials and appointees to make up 73 percent of total sources, the networks clearly promoted the official line on the war and minimized dissenting views." "If News from Iraq is Bad, It's Coming from U.S. Officials" What we have here is what Chomsky would refer to as "manufactured consent". War is big business in America, oil is big business, and the media is big business. All three are concerned with selling a product to the American people...It's time for us to stop buying it.