One of the stated major objectives of the American war in Iraq is to establish a “democratic” form of government. Yet when we look at the way decisions were made in our war policy, American democracy itself is found to be seriously lacking. The decision to go to war was one of the most important […]
Opinion
Posted inOpinion
Young Americans
“Consider the life of a teenager: You have parents, teachers, telling you what to do. You have movies, magazines, and TV telling you what to do. But you know what you have to do. Your job, your purpose, is to get accepted.” So said Harry H., the nastily-nicknamed, wizened-beyond-his-years pirate radio jock in the 1990 […]
Posted inOpinion
Strange embedded fellows
Welcome to what NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw calls “the greatest televised event of the history of humankind.” The Iraq war has become a place where journalists and politics make strange embedded fellows. When networks go wall-to-wall with any story, they move fast to brand their coverage. It gets a catchy name, dramatic music, and flashy […]
Posted inOpinion
The world is watching
Lee Kyong-hee in the Korea Herald, Seoul Last Saturday afternoon, the host of a popular radio news show in Seoul pleaded with Korean parents to keep their children from television. It was hours after a thousand Tomahawks had pounded Baghdad. Watching the city reduced to smoldering rubble and its skies ablaze with soaring columns of […]
Posted inOpinion
Image conscious
Since the beginning of the new Iraq war, the Qatari news network Al Jazeera has been showing corpses. For a few days, pickings were slim: Several bombing casualties from the first night’s selective strike, then a few more on the following evenings. The station hit paydirt late last Friday and throughout Saturday. Al Jazeera provided […]
