Wars, Lies & Videotape - tonight/tomorrow - Discover/Time

DCIVL <192>
January 27: 6:00PM, 9:00PM
January 28: 2:00AM, 5:00AM, 10:00AM, 1:00PM


Published on Tuesday, January 27, 2004 by MediaChannel.org
War Coverage's Biggest Lie -- Censoring the Horrors
by Rory O'Connor

There's been a lot of talk in the media lately about lying. Best-sellers from both the Bill O'Reilly right and the Al Franken left denounce "Lying Liars" and announce "No Spin Zones."

Others books either decry (Bernie Goldberg) or deny (Eric Alterman) supposed bias in the media. And most media criticism of the attack on Iraq has centered on contentions that President Bush and top advisers like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld played fast and loose with the truth in their stated reasons for the run up to war -- from weapons of mass destruction that cannot be found to spurious stories of connections between Saddam and Osama and Iraq and Al Qaeda.

So this week's Discovery Times cable television special "Wars, Lies and Videotape" (Tuesday, January 27, 8-9 PM) seems especially timely. The film is part of a 'Reporters at War' series of specials about the history of war reporting and "journalists' battles for truth, access and survival in war zones."

Although this episode focuses on the media and the war in Iraq, it also examines what it was like historically as reporters moved from the front page to the front line, from World War II to the present.

As a British-produced series....more

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0127-09.htm