The Neocon Battle for Media

Robert Parry, at ConsortiumNews, has an interesting take on the administration attacks on the NYTimes. Today's "must read".

Since the 1980s, when the neoconservatives burst onto the Washington scene, they have always understood the power that comes from controlling the flow of information that passes from the U.S. government to the news media and then to the American people.

This transmission of information through Washington was to these savvy neoconservatives what a key railroad junction was to Civil War generals, a strategic switching point to be captured and exploited.

For years, the Times' news pages had been the neocons' preferred conduit for fictitious stories about Iraq's nuclear weapons program as well as for criticism of Al Gore and other political challengers. During the war fever of 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice loved to cite supportive stories in the Times, made even more convincing because the Times editorial page opposed the Iraq invasion.

However, following the humiliating discovery in 2003-2004 of how the nation's "newspaper of record" had been deceived about Iraq's WMD, Times news editors began to resist the administration's propaganda themes and even rebuff some White House demands for silence on terrorism-related stories.

After using the New York Times for years as a favorite propaganda vehicle, the administration may now be making the newspaper and its editors an example of what happens to journalists who stop toeing the line.

But the larger significance of the Times bashing is that it marks the opening of a decisive phase in the Bush administration's long campaign to lock in a revised version of the American constitutional system, in effect putting Bush's national security judgments beyond question and outside any meaningful oversight.

Meanwhile, Bush's neoconservative administration is tightening its grip on what information the American people get to see and hear.

Message to journalists: Now that you know what chumps you've been played for, and how ill-used you've been, fight these motherfuckers like all our lives depend on it, because they do. You've let 'em get away with their criminal takeover for years, been complicit in it. Show some balls and help get our country back by finally telling the truth which you should have been all along.

Play your cards right and you can help put these bastards behind bars where they belong. Maybe you'll even sleep better.

It's them or you. Your call.