Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception : How the Media Failed to Cover the War on Iraq [Hardcover]

Danny Schechter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2003

Schechter's insightful, wide-ranging critique of the American media's war coverage targets the way in which a virtual merger between the Pentagon and the media produced a war spectacle that the American public was primed to see, media collusion in the campaign to discredit the UN, "rightwing liberation theology" as war propaganda, the cosy relationship between news anchors and retired officers hired as military analysts, the controversies over Peter Arnett and Geraldo Rivera, the looting of Baghdad, the lack of media focus on civilian casualties, the disparities in coverage between U.S. and foreign media, and more.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

News hound Schechter (Media Wars; The More You Watch the Less You Know; etc.) opines on WMDs ("Weapons of Mass Deception") in this impassioned indictment of the news media's coverage of the recent war in Iraq. Among his beefs are the civilian casualties that were "rarely shown in the western media," the way the coverage "sold the war even as it claimed to be just reporting it," and the media's poor-and in some cases absent-portrayal of the war protests, which he says were "the largest global protests in history." Calling the President "Daddy Bush" and using other colloquial terms, Schechter presents his thoughts in a diary-like form, dating his thoughts as the war progresses and interjecting questions (for himself and for readers) throughout. For skeptics and those unhappy with the way Americans learned of what was happening in Iraq, this is an energetic but deeply discouraging study.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"In this compelling inquiry, Danny Schechter vividly captures two wars: the one observed by embedded journalists & some who chose not to follow that path, & the 'carefully planned, tightly controlled & brilliantly executed media war that was fought alongside it,' a war that was scarcely covered or explained, he rightly reminds us. That crucial failure is addressed with great skill & insight in this careful & comprehensive study, which teaches lessons we ignore at our peril." - Noam Chomsky "Once again, Danny Schechter has the goods on the Powers That Be. This time, he's caught America's press puppies in delicto, 'embed' with the Pentagon. Schechter tells the tawdry tale of the affair between officialdom & the news boys-who, instead of covering the war, covered it up. How was it that in the reporting on the 'liberation' of the people of Iraq, we saw the liberatees only from the gun hole of

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 286 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books (October 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591021731
• ISBN-13: 978-1591021735
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,391,725 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars From Robert Furs, Counterbias.com, July 24, 2004

By 

Alan J. Goldman "AJ" (Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception : How the Media Failed to Cover the War on Iraq (Hardcover)

Danny Schechter, a television producer and independent filmmaker, is a notable figure in the media community. As a writer and speaker focused on media issues, Schechter brings to the table a more leftward viewpoint than that which is found in today's mainstream media (no, the media isn't as 'liberal' as Fox News may tell you, and the fact that people like Schechter no longer exist in the mainstream is testament to that).

Schechter is extremely critical of the way the media has conglomerated into a mass of right-leaning, sensationalistic, pro-authority and screw-everyone-else insanity, and, as the inside jacket states, Embedded is his analysis of the media's "cheerleading for a war in which reporting was sanitized, staged, and suppressed".

Why introduce Schechter's new book, Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception, with a seemingly unrelated description of his blog? Well, because the book is the blog. With little much else, the book isn't much more than entries taken directly from his web writings, rearranged, formatted into a columnized, newspaper-like format, and printed in book form, with hopes of making a tidy profit (one could say that by selling the book, he wishes to disseminate his views to a wider audience, but then what audience is wider than the internet on which the book's contents already appear?).

Unfortunately, the fact that most everything in the book is simply reproduced from widely-available online form (the archives are all still online, and worth going through if time is spare), is not the book's worst problem.

The blog-grabbing nature wasn't constrained to content alone-even spelling and punctuation errors are taken straight from the online text, and they simply haven't been corrected. Quality control is minimal, with spelling, punctuation, and even factual errors, all quite eminent. It's as if the book was thrown together in a matter of days, without much contextual editing-if any at all-to go along with it.

Further, the books format-a virtual replication of blog entries-make it much less readable as a book. There is absolutely no flow to the many short, albeit interesting and informative, entries. The choppy nature of a blog, with new entries once a day or less rather than a continuous flow, mean that the book version contains much repetition that may grate on the reader's nerves (the MSNBC Ashleigh Banfield saga that Schechter is fond of mentioning feels as though it is repeated fifty times in the book).

With all its faults, Embedded is an entertaining and somewhat informative read for citizens still lost in the pro-war media fog, who are unwilling to read 286 pages of text on a bright computer screen. The short tidbits are fun to skim and the book is a witness to the faults in the media's Iraq War coverage. Unfortunately, Schechter's obvious left-wing bias may turn off some, and the lazy nature of the book will likely displease most others. Schechter's fifth book is Embedded in mediocrity. He can surely do better.

2 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Great Deal of Effort, June 11, 2004

By 

Ruth Merenga (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception : How the Media Failed to Cover the War on Iraq (Hardcover)

It is obvious that a great deal of effort went into writing this book. Unfortunately it is heavy-handed without much substance.
Also the author seems to have a personal chip on his shoulder so it is not very objective.