Media critique

Imagine how different views of the war on terror might be if Americans were exposed to similar grief from foreign victims of U.S. violence.

The American media instantly converted the invasion of Iranian waters by U.S. ships into an act of aggression by Iran, because the U.S. media establishment believes the world is owned by the U.S.

The U.K.-funded media outlet unwittingly publishes a Saudi admission that it is arming al Qaeda, then whitewashes it with shoddy editing.

The British Murdoch-owned paper publishes a report trying to exploit this mindset: "If some anonymous government officials said it, and journalists repeat it while hiding who they are, I guess it must be true."

Several members of the august "US Journalists Against Transparency" club are outraged by revelations <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/world/asia/nsa-breached-chinese-servers-seen-as-spy-peril.html?hp">in yesterday's <em>New York Times</em></a> (jointly <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nsa-spied-on-chinese-government-and-networking-firm-huawei-a-960199.html">published by <em>der Spiegel</em></a>) that the NSA has been hacking the products of the Chinese tech company Huawei as well as Huawei itself. <!--more-->

James Clapper, President Obama's top national security official, is probably best known for having been caught lying outright to Congress about NSA activities, behavior which (as some baseball players found out) happens to be a felony under federal law. <!--more-->