US media alibis for Qana massacre

The basic modus operandi of the US media has been well established over the past two-and-a-half weeks. The war cannot be mentioned without claiming that Hezbollah, always referred to as a terrorist organization, ignited the Israeli onslaught by seizing two soldiers.

Journalists worthy of the name have a responsibility to probe beneath the official version of events, to question the government’s claims, to hint at possibilities that the powers-that-be would prefer not be discussed. In the present conflict that would mean at least raising the possibility that the US and Israel have definite geopolitical ambitions.

The American media investigates none of this. It simply repeats the trite formulae of the Bush administration (a “sustainable ceasefire,” a “robust” mandate to disarm Hezbollah, and the deployment of an equally “robust” international peacekeeping force, etc.) ad infinitum.

The efforts of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has given Israel the green light to carry out its attacks, are inevitably referred to as a “peacekeeping mission.” Israel’s wanton violence is described as “self-defense.”

In the morning following the massacre at Qana, the US media scrambled to provide explanations for the horrible event. In the first place, American television refused to show images of the mangled, bloody bodies that television audiences in the rest of the world were seeing. “We cannot show this,” they said.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2006/jul2006/medi-j31.shtml