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WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception

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In the Weapons of Mass Deception, the producers show how this administration was determined to win media support and thus the country's support for their adventure into Iraq.

Mass media, now owned by large and conservative conglomerates avoided the anti-war stories, to the point of refusing to run commercials for people who were opposed to the war. Anti-war demonstrations received marginal coverage, at best. When Phil Donahue had opposed the war, and said so publicly on his show, the network cancelled his top-rated show. His replacement? Michael Savage who lasted less than four months with ratings in the cellar. Clearly, this "liberally-biased" media did not want to rock the conservative boat.

The administration's genius turned out to be first orienting and outfitting reporters with kevlar helmets and vests, and showing them how to use gas masks for chemical attacks that would never come. This gave the media the feeling that Iraq was an enemy.

The embedding process was sheer administration genius. By placing reporters with our soldiers and marines, they identified with them to the point that their stories had lost all objectivity, and they had been reduced to a micro view of the war.

While some may complain that this production is biased, that is what the producer's slant is. It is also what he is already describing. The bias was in the media being duped by the administration and losing their objectivity in reporting the war.

Any criticism this DVD may receive, the facts are irrefutable. All these things happened. Schecter simply compiles these facts and presents them in a logical and presentable fashion.

This is recommended viewing.

An insiders look by a seasoned journalist who has been in the trenches and is not afraid to pull the cover away and look at why there is either disinformation or a cursory examination of our foreign policy by the media, usually it is collusion with the GE's and Disney's but it also goes farther, and is explored well by Danny Schechter, who has been around the block a time or two and knows of what he speaks. He sees things through a largely neutral eye, and leaves out histrionics or accusations for the most part, focusing his view on what went wrong with journalism being skeptical and analytical and not part of the official party line.

He looks also at the Arab media, their perceptions, and how they broadcast death and suffering (strangely, prior to 9/11 Al Jazeera, that now famous network all Americans have heard of, was considered a tool of Israel and Washington by much of the Arab world)

A great and very informative look at the backroom dealing, wheeling, and waiting the media is forced to endure, the news conferences and release of military information in encapsulated sound bites of often meaningless double speak, and the rarity with which any hard questioning occurs of governmental decision making by major media outlets (disregarding FOX, of course) and in regards especially to the war ongoing in Iraq. A very informative look at how the media conducts its day to day business and how the Bush administration is essentially also engaged in an 'information war'.

Enlightening.

This is an excellent documentary showing how the Bush administration cowed, seduced and used the media to sell the Iraqi war to the American public. It is also an indictment of the media for its failure to accurately report the news during the build up to the war and during the war itself. The media, from the lofty New York Times to the unfair and unbalanced Fox News, bought hook, line and sinker the administration's tale of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and helped Bush and the neocons prepare the American public for the invasion. A nice piece of war-prep irony revealed in the DVD was the administration's disinclination to call the plan "Operation Iraqi Liberation" since that would have led to the unfortunate (and perhaps telling) anagram "OIL."

The media turned the war into a "militainment." Bottom line, the news networks stood to make mass bucks by covering the war, by playing it up in red, white and blue sets, and playing on the public's need to escape from the usual TV fare. Exciting graphics were designed by people who worked in the computer game industry. Curiously the rule, "if it bleeds, it leads" was suspended because there was way, way too much gore to show the public, especially while they were eating dinner; and anyway it would not serve the purposes of the administration to show all those dead and dying Iraqis (especially the children) smeared with blood and gaping wounds, nor ironically would it serve to show the maimed American troops. In fact, it would be considered down right unpatriotic to do so. (You'll recall the flap over photos of flag-covered coffins of dead American soldiers.) The war had to be sanitized and made palpable. Consequently what prevailed was "best bomb" footage showing really awesome explosions--buildings blown to bits, cars flying into the air as Rumsfeld enthused over "shock and awe." The fact that the shock and awe resulted in human casualties was very much beside the point. As has been said, "In war the first casualty is truth."

The tactic of "embedding" reporters with the military was a stroke of genius by the Bush administration because it ensured one-sided and biased reporting on the war. Being embedded (not precisely to say "in bed with") the young, idealistic American soldiers for weeks at time, being supported and protected by those soldiers and sharing their experiences forced the reporters to identify with the soldiers and to assume a similar point of view. As the documentary points out there was also some "Stockholm syndrome" psychology at work.

Sadly, the media swallowed the administration's disinformation about the never-found weapons of mass destruction without noticing that the primary justification for the war was a sham. There was also no link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Osama bin Laden hated the B'athist regime of Saddam Hussein almost as much as he hates Israel and the United States since Saddam Hussein is about as Islamic as say Rupert Murdoch. And of course Saddam Hussein had no use for bin Laden since he would be uncontrollable and dangerous to his regime. So that rationale was also a sham. The idea that we would be doing the people of Iraq a favor by getting rid of Saddam Hussein was also a sham because (1) any invasion would bring more misery to the people than the continued presence of Hussein; and (2) the Iraqis would rather be ruled by a dictator than be occupied by a foreign power (which is the case for practically any country in the world, including our own).

And finally the idea that by invading Iraq we would be fighting the war on terrorism (which became the administration's johnny come lately justification for the war) is not only a sham and a lie, but is actually counterproductive. The invasion of Iraq has been a setback in the war on terrorism, and actually a diversion from it. It could be argued that Bush invaded Iraq because after the invasion of Afghanistan he had no plan to go after Al Qaeda and so created a diversion--a very costly and stupid diversion.

The mainstream media failed not only as news sources, but editorially, and as news analysts. Like Bush and the neocons in the White House, the news media failed to look beyond "best bombs" and "shock and awe" and "mission accomplished" to the aftermath. The media also failed to educate the public on just how absurd the idea is that you can force democracy onto a mostly Islamic country, especially a country artificially formed from such diverse elements as the Shi'a, the Sunni and the Kurds. Furthermore, because the Shi'a are in the majority, even if a democracy is formed, it may be voted out with an Iranian style theocracy the likely result--not exactly what the White House had in mind. Another likely result is another dictatorship following a bloody civil war.

Director Danny Schechter also points to how the press was controlled and manipulated during White House press conferences. Any reporter who asked a tough question of the press secretary or the president would not be called upon again. In order words, the press conferences were (and largely still are) propaganda opportunities for the Bush administration.

It should never be forgotten that however mainstream or "liberal" or enlightened the individual reporter may or may not be, it doesn't matter because the media is controlled by conglomerate interests (think Rupert Murdoch) that own the stations, magazines and newspapers, and those guys are conservative and want support for their man in the White House, and they will not long tolerate anything else.

Question: with the consolidation of media into fewer and fewer hands, are we witnessing the beginning of the death of a free press in the United States?

This is an interesting and informative DVD to gain a broader view of how the media operates, especially during the runup to the Iraq war. However, it is so jam-packed with information that it occasionally seems to gloss over important points or scenarios. There are some segments that I would have liked Schechter to have elaborated on and a few which could have been presented more clearly. As a member of a younger generation this DVD is great because it provides an informed picture of just how much the media is in bed with government. For me, it tied a lot of loose ends together in my head and gave me a broader view of how mass media functions. I disagree with another reviewer that Schechter was in the movie too much. He was narrating his own point of view and he stayed out of the way when it was appropriate.

When the US's present "war" began, I was working out at a gym. On the gym's television, Wolfe Blitzkrieg sang the Bush administration's tune eagerly, he was such a cheerleader I expected him to slip on a short skirt. On another network, some "correspondent" claimed that the troops had found some chemical weapons, and implied that the UN inspectors had been looking for years and hadn't found them while the diligent and competent US troops found them in days. When it turned out later that they were going through a fertilizer factory, the "correspondent," who should have been locked up, never came out and said, "What I said was false, and stupid." So his bosses should be locked up too.

This "war" has now been going on for substantially longer than WWII, its support has dwindled to maybe 25 percent of the voters, yet we're still there. Americans and Iraqis are still being killed. Why is this true?

Danny Schecter really comes through with a well-produced indictment: the the US media aren't worth the paper or the air they use to spread their words.

I began taking notes on this DVD, but it was getting too depressing. I mean, the Pentagon has done a clever job of setting up the US media representatives. I think one of the critics called it the "Stockholm syndrome," i.e., the Pentagon put unarmed "journalists" with the armed troops. So the former began to identify with the latter. It's a classic propaganda technique that another American critic called "straight out of Stalin." Yep, the media are the commissar culture!

Danny divided the film up into sections, one of which was the "Fox News Effect." I've been following that to a degree. Fox is a right wing cheerleader with (at least formerly) decent ratings, so the other networks followed suit. One can't seem to be in line with the US unless he tows the Pentagon line. We've seen it all. "You don't support the troops? What are you, part of Al Qaeda??" Indeed, toward the beginning of the film, a peace activist was being threatened by people near "Ground Zero" in NYC, for suggesting that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Heaven forbid, she might have a divergent opinion.

I've read on the travesty that is "embedded" journalism since I read "Second Front" a long time ago. So that's nothing new. (It is, however, something that should have real journalists, not embedded cheerleaders furious!) But still much of the American public is in the dark. One portion of the film stated that even CNN has different stories for the US than for the rest of the world. There was, of course, a rationalization for that; the concept of "cognitive dissonance" comes to mind any time Danny talked with media representatives.

Then there's the Bush rationalizations: There were no WMDs, so the regime changed the subject. There was no media pressure to get the regime to face reality, so the war continues.

Then there's Schecter's suggestion--offered with some evidence--that the non-"embedded" journalists particularly were actually targetted by the military. Some were killed in "friendly fire" and some other "accidents" were just discounted as that, when they didn't happen arbitrarily, i.e., were probably not accidents. That needs to be investigated further!

I guess one of the bottom lines is that the US media are owned by a few very large corporations. NBC was claiming they had been reasonable journalists, while critics challenged that--with more-than adequate evidence--that NBC was just towing the line. But NBC is owned by General Electric which was given upwards of $600 billion in contracts to rebuild Iraq. Isn't that what they call a "conflict of interest?" ABC is owned by Disney, which would rather entertain than inform. That, in fact, was another section of the film, on entertainment--I think someone refered to it as militainment--and journalism. And all the mega-media want the federal FCC on their side, so they refrain from confronting federal government policy. And that's a disaster.

There's so much that could be said, but it gets pretty depressing. What I hope is that teachers and professors show this to their classes so that young people realize how they're being hoodwinked. We Yanks seem to think we're miles beyond the rest of the world. And many in the rest of the world, the ones who don't hate us anyway, think we're a bunch of ignorant buffoons.

Spread the word on this DVD and others like it. Wake up!

Here's a documentary by former "20/20" producer Danny Schechter -- who calls himself a media crtiic -- that alleges that the Bush administration used the news media to build support for its war in Iraq (the second one, both for Bush and the war in Iraq.) Schechter puts together a lot of video evidence to support his thesis, suggesting war coverage became something less than journalism in the new century.

Well, duh! Maybe Schechter never realized this because he was involved in television "news" all his life, but there is no such thing as news delivered on television. It is enterainment and has been entertainment since the line was crossed way back in the era of Wilbur Mills and the Tidal Basin Bombshell.

For those of you too young to remember it, Mills was chair of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee aroudn about 1974 and had a fling with a stripper known as the Tidal Basin Bombshell. While news media outlets previously refused to merge the personal and public elements of an elected official -- all journalists knew John Kennedy was a womanizer but didn't report it -- this line was crossed first with Mills. The line disappeared when 1980 presidential candidate Gary Hart was exposed as a womanizer by a Florida newspaper, whose reporters hid out in the bushes waiting for him to depart his girlfriend's house.

Now, a generation removed from these beginnings and with television "news" program profligate on American television and being hardly any different than "Hard Copy" and "Entertainment Tonight", I don't need some "documentary" by a self-described media critic (who made his living as part of that hypocrisy) to tell me the media was sucked in by the Bush administation and the second Iraq war.

I've got news for Schechter and anyone that thinks his documentary is important: journalists are people, people with feelings, people working in an industry that has moved more and more toward entertainment since the advent of cable television 30 years ago or so. These people want their stories to reflect the reality of society, not just the reality of the story they report.

I have a first hand example since I was part of it. During the latter 1990s a new phenomenon captured the governmental landscape. It was called "welfare reform". In short, it was a sequence of activities and incentives that moved welfare recipients from support by government largess to support by the work place. Or so went the reporting on this, at any rate.

Story after story in medium after medium touted the "success" of welfare reform. People that hated welfare (which is almost everyone) loved it because it kicked those lazy folks off welfare checks and made them work for a living. Everyone else liked it (including jouralists) because they sympathized with those feelings. Briefly stated, welfare reform was a win for everyone. Everyone loved it. And that's how it was reported.

Today, there are fewer welfare recipients collecting checks than anytime since the Great Society of the 1960s. The downside, however, is most of those folks now work in low-paying jobs and are collecting Mediciad, or socialized medicine, paid for by state and federal government. Many employers are jumping on the bandwagon and finding ways for their employees to get their helath care paid by Medicaid instead of employer-covered health insurance. USA Today, which was once thought of as the exemplar of the crossover of news and entertainment, did a lengthy sequence of stories on this mess not long ago.

So why did everyone say welfare reform succeeded when it, in fact, merely moved millions of people from one support system to another? Because most people supported the tenets of welfare reform and jouranlists sympathized with it.

This, and not the phony superficiality shown in "WMD - Weapons of Mass Destruction" -- is the reason the news media (and the television news media in particular) so gratefully jumped on board for the second President Bush and his campaign in Iraq. They supported it and they wanted him to win. It was no different than in World War II except the war was based on a sequence of lies and distortions.

So, if you think this documentary is enlightening and proves something about the world you didn't already know, I am sorry to tell you that you are pretty naive and don't know much about how "news" works. This documentary is exactly what it purports to expose -- a superficial review of a problem that took 30 years to root, then mushroomed during the cable television news explosion of the 1990s.

Today, there is essentially no difference between the programming content of Fox News Channel and a "Friends" rerun. They both should be given the same amount of serious consideration when you make decisions about events in the world. This, I hope, will be the subject of Danny Schechter's next expose.

This professionally written and produced documentary is essential viewing for any American concerned about their free press. In this exposé, of the sort which would have been on 20/20 or 60 Minutes when I was kid, media veteran and critic Danny Schechter amasses evidence which shows how complicit the American media were in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Statistics are damning---of the roughly 800 experts on American TV in the build-up to war, only 4 provided anti-war perspectives. Most of the time anti-war and other positions critical of the government line were simply ignored; when they were shown, it was simply a quick shot of "those people protesting" or a soundbite about soldiers protecting protestors rights to free speech, instead of any serious analysis of the arguments made against the war.

And so a large percentage of the American people's voices were lost from the so-called debate, because of a priori prejudices and agendas shared by the media producers, military leaders, and politicians.

This film provides evidence in support of Noam Chomsky's propaganda model of the American news media. The viewer sees how career advancement, product marketing, market share, etc. trump good old truth telling and challenging power in the modern American mass media.

I was a little let down by this film. I had expected an expose on American news media and how it supported the Iraq war, and who in the media stood to gain from it.

Instead, there was little I didn't already know, and it was presented in the first-person as Danny's own rant against American news media, and what he thought was wrong with it. There were frequent personal references to Danny and his history in the news media -- a bit egocentric.

And something about it didn't quite click. It was slow, for one thing, and it kept going on and on about the same things. (A metaphor, perhaps, for how the news media cover "important" stuff like Michael Jackson over and over.)

WMD is worth collecting if you want every film against state corporate media, but save your time and money, and watch "Orwell Rolls in His Grave", "OutFoxed", and "A Patriot Act", in that order, before you watch WMD.

Please also look for a dvd called PAINFUL DECEPTIONS on ebay it's an analysis of the September 11th attack. (2 hours of amazing footage not covered by the mainstream media) Some of the allegations are extremely serious and at least some of the questions seem to have a lot of evidence such as the lack of
debris from the Pentagon struck by a commercial liner.
(yet not a single picture of the plane from
surveillance video & the hole in the building was not
large enough) Also the aircraft impacts & fires in all
probability would not have destroyed a single body
beyond positive identification and yet all evidence
was destroyed including FAA tapes. The buildings
neatly collapsed into fine powder without toppling
over. Scientific evidence shows that any size fire will never pulverize a steel building. The debris was disposed of overseas by the same company as the Oklahoma bombing scam, so there could be no investigations. There is evidence that a
group of Pentagon officials, other government
officials, business leaders & priveleged companies were warned hours before the attack to stay out of the buildings and much much more. Please, could you also check out this website, (...) so we the people may discuss these
9 11 inconsistencies openly for the first time.
(...)

Also these dvd's covered the evidence found for the 9
11 inconsistencies & we were shocked that you haven't
mentioned them, but you can find them on Ebay.

Painful Deceptions - dvd
9 11 IN PLANE SITE - dvd
9 11 THE GREATEST LIE EVER SOLD - dvd
9 11 THE GREAT ILLUSION - dvd
BUSH FAMILY FORTUNES - dvd
and of course, BUSH'S BRAIN - dvd

Thank you