America's Fox News network has been demonstrating since the start of the war in Iraq an amazing lesson in media hypocrisy. The anchors, reporters and commentators unceasingly emphasize that the war's goal is to free the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. The frequency, consistence and passion with which they use that lame excuse, and the fact that nearly no other reasons are mentioned shows that this is the network's editorial policy. The American flag lies in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, while the logo accompanying the programming is Operation Iraqi Freedom, the official name given by the Pentagon. Fox journalists display what appears to be genuine happiness, innocent and sincere, brainwashed in nature, in the expectation for the wonderful day when the American army leads the Iraqi people from slavery to freedom.
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As far as the war's motives are concerned, Fox looks like part of the propagandistic campaign of systematic disinformation by the Bush administration, while it accuses the Iraqi regime of disseminating false information about the situation on the battlefield. The motives for the war and measure of its justice are at the heart of the current conflict between the United States and its European allies, and has ramifications over its relations with Russia, China and the Arab world as well as its position as the global superpower. Just as the Iraqi TV deceives its viewers about the situation on the battlefield, Fox misleads its American viewers about the reasons for the war. If only the issue of the human rights of the Iraqi people was at stake, there never would have been a war.
But Fox broadcasts to the entire world. Like CNN, it presents to the globe the face of America and its perception of reality, and it exports its dark side, the infuriating side that inspires so much hostility: the self-righteousness, the brutality, the pretension, hubris, and simplicity, the feverish faith in its moral superiority, the saccharine and infantile patriotism, and the deep self-persuasion that America is not only the most powerful of the nations, but also that the truth is always American. Fox looks like the media arm of the superpower mentality, indifferent to any perspective that is not American and alienating vast portions of the world. Its war coverage is as governmental as that of Iraqi TV. This is American TV.
From whence comes this hysterically anti-American drivel? From some rabid Islamist rag or the ravings of a preacher in Gaza? Or perhaps from some remaining pocket of daft defiance in Paris or in Moscow?
Nope. The foregoing is courtesy of the only slightly (cough) left-leaning Israeli daily Ha'aretz. It's almost two weeks old now, but the melody's still the same. Nice, huh?
