One of my favorite authors, Orson Scott Card, has posted an excellent article equating purposeful omissions and outright fabrications by the widely read and seen media to Josephy McCarthy’s anti-Communist crusade in the 1950s.
McCarthy used the country’s post-World War II anti-Communist to fuel his own ambition and to attack his political enemies. Card summarizes this way:
He was a liar. He used our fear of a genuine Communist threat for his own personal political advantage. He accused people and organizations of being Communist without a shred of evidence, but lied and said that he had evidence. He staged televised hearings to smear people’s reputations. Hiding behind his pose as a noble crusader and savior of America, he attacked people who had done no wrong — people who acted wholly within their rights as Americans, and who were not agents of any foreign power.
Card uses two recent examples to illustrate his point. First, the alleged murder of a Palestinian boy and wounding of his father by Israeli troops. France 2 aired footage showing the boy and his father taking cover while bullets hit all around them; allegedly they were pinned down by Israeli soldiers. As it turns out the entire episode was staged by the Palestinians. France 2 had footage proving the staging yet aired the story anyway.
Card’s second example is more recent. A soldier killed in Iraq wrote a letter to his girlfriend that was intended to be delivered only if he died. The New York Times got hold of the letter and edited it in such a way as to make the soldier appear to be serving in Iraq against his better judgement. They purposely left out the bit that explained the soldier’s true emotions:
“I don’t regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it’s not to me. I’m here helping these people, so they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark.”
Card concludes:
It’s bad enough when politicians lie for their own advantage, like a certain President who committed perjury in order to win in a lawsuit brought by a victim of his sexual harassment.
But we expect our news media to regard truth as their highest value. That’s the business they’re in — telling us the truth. That’s the solemn promise they make. And if they embrace McCarthyism — if they knowingly or carelessly repeat lies, or omit truths that would transform the meaning of their story, in order to advance even the most righteous cause — then where can we turn for the truth?
…Who in America is surprised when anti-semites in Palestine and France conspire to tell lies about Jews? But when an American reporter omits a dead soldier’s fervent testament about the war and spins the quote he does use to serve exactly the opposite ideological purpose, and does it in the news pages of the New York Times, then maybe McCarthyism isn’t so very dead after all.
As the popular saying goes, read the whole thing.
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