A PICTURE'S WORTH A 1000 WORDS...
...or perhaps only 45.

Click here to see pictures of Saddam's statue in Baghdad being toppled by the "masses." The images give a somewhat different perspective than the ones shown on CNN and company.

Of course, I've writte quite often about public opinion is manipulated by the corporate media. Or perhaps more accurately, how public opinion is shaped by the corporate media who is manipulated by the political and economic establishment. It goes beyond simplistic labels of "liberal" and "conservative." Progressive voices are just as likely to be ignored by the corporate media as libertarian voices.

This is due primarily to changes in the media. The "mainstream" American media, particularly television, has become largely worthless when it comes to the public service of informing people. Now, this isn't necessarily the case in other countries. I find myself left challenged whenever I read The Globe and Mail (Toronto) or Le Monde (Paris) or The Independent (London) or if I listen to the BBC or Radio Netherlands' English service. The Christian Science Monitor is certainly the fairest newspaper in the US that would come close to the mainstream, but few people have ever heard of it.

But I am left annoyed whenever I watch the American networks, even CNN (the least bad of the so-called news services). Their war coverage has been universally decried (from objective sources) for overly sanitizing things. Even at the few press conferences I watched, all the American reporters were tossing softballs at the spokesmen; they were tripping over themselves to fawn. Only the BBC people asked serious, challenging questions.

Even outside of war coverage, they are equally superficial. On a domestic issues, for example, they take someone a standard "liberal" and a standard "conservative" to get appropriately predictable quotes or to simulate a contrived encouter they call a debate.

Most often, however, it is worse than that. Most of the time, outside of war, they talk about micro-issues that have little effect on the average person. As compelling as the Laci Petersen and Elizabeth Smart cases may have been as human dramas, do they really have an effect on your life? I could countenance them getting a brief mention in the news summary or perhaps a few minutes of discussion from time to time. But do/did they really merit this orgy of national media attention, speculation and analysis? The answers are no and yes. No if it's defined in terms of informing the public; yes if it's defined in terms of ratings and money.

The American media is good an entertaining people. It is good at getting people all riled up. It is no longer good at informing people, simply because it's more difficult and more expensive than the other two things. So from a corporate standpoint, which is how such decisions are taken: why bother? Some will justify this as "just business," but let's not pretend it isn't true.