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July 9, 2007

The New York Times Misleads America On Iran

If your the enemy of America, with intentions of destroying it, and you need a propagandist to disarm America and lull it's populace into being oblivious to both your intentions and your capability, you just couldn't do any better than get the New York Times to be your apologist and propagandist. Such is the case with Iran.

As Ed Lasky points out in his "must-read" piece of the day: The New York Times has unparalled abilty to create the news agenda that the rest of American media follows, and by the Times portraying Iran and its nuclear program in the most benign way possible, explaining away its apocalyptic ideology through absurd translation gymnastics that rely on a marginal professor, apologizing or ignoring its role in promoting terror and the deaths of Americans and other peoples, minimizing at all turns the risks of its nuclear program, and depicting an Iran that is being bullied by America and one that should be allowed to develop not only its nuclear technology but also a nuclear arsenal, the Times is essentially telling America that it should come to accept the "reality" of the destruction of America.

The New York Times has been criticized for helping terrorists in the past by disclosing investigatory methods and rendition policies and practices, supporting them in its editorial pages and allowing terror suspects to spin their stories in the news section, disclosing methods our nation has used to prevent funds from reaching terrorists, condemned the existence of prisons holding terrorists, criticizing the laws brought to bear to prevent terrorism, and whitewashing or apologizing for terror when it occurs.

In fact, they have done far worse. The paper has exposed us and our allies to an even more perilous and growing danger.

The New York Times, famous for revealing the cover-ups of others, has engaged in its own cover-up: the paper has consistently mislead its readers (including a large percentage of the policy-making elites) regarding the goals and nature of the Iranian nuclear program and the lethal malevolency that fuels its development. The people of our nation, and those of our allies, have become vulnerable to a regime that not only is rapidly developing the capability to build nuclear weapons but is also driven by a passionate and irrational messianic ideology that welcomes nuclear war as a means to bring about the advent of a more spiritual and Shiite Muslim world. The Times is fulfilling a role that it once did so show shamefully in the 1930s: an enabler of genocide.

The paper's power is hard to overestimate. The Times creates the newscape of America: the issues it chooses to highlight and the perspective it brings to these issues are the genesis behind the news coverage of the mainstream media. What it chooses to be "fit to print" becomes, through its sway and news syndicate, the stories that fill America's daily news. Arthur ("Pinch") Sulzberger has alluded that it has been his desire to drive public policy since his Vietnam-war era college days. He has accomplished his mission. The paper's potency reaches the halls of Congress; the agenda that drives the paper often becomes the agenda in Washington. Herein lies the peril: by presenting a Pollyannaish view of Iran's intentions and abilities, the paper has served to spin the news in a way that has demonstrably minimized the threat from Iran, has eroded our ability to thwart Iran's nuclear program, and has ridiculed and dismissed the concerns of people who take a more wary and realistic view regarding the Iranian regime.

The paper's portrayal of the Iranian regime and its nuclear program is a mirage: its intentions are far more lethal than the paper depicts, its nuclear program is far more advanced than the paper conveys and the consequences of living (or dying) with such a regime is far more dire than the paper would have its readers believe. The paper's advocacy for the regime defies belief: the paper calls for an end to American "bullying" of the dictatorial regime, endless rounds of diplomacy, dismisses sanctions and the promotion of reform from within, and, finally and most disgracefully, acquiescence to a nuclear-armed regime that advocates genocide.

... The New York Times has unparalled abilty to create the news agenda that the rest of American media follows. Many of our decision-makers rely on the Times for its views of the world and for the opinions it promotes. The Times has portrayed Iran and its nuclear program in the most benign way possible: explaining away its apocalyptic ideology through abusrd translation gymnastics that rely on a marginal professor, apologizing or ignoring its role in promoting terror and the deaths of Americans and other peoples, minimizing at all turns the risks of its nuclear program, and depicting an Iran that is being bullied by America and one that should be allowed to develop not only its nuclear technology but also a nuclear arsenal. In the Times view, America should come to accept this "reality".

The Iranian dictator boasts of his desire to remove Israel from the "pages of time"; if he succeeds, the pages of the Times will again play a role in yet another Holocaust.

Related: Genocide Preferred

Posted by Richard at July 9, 2007 6:43 AM