2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: I guess I’m an Obama apologist... [View all]calimary
(81,085 posts)that people on CNN and elsewhere sure are going apeshit over the Guardian.
WHERE THE FUCK WERE THEY IN 2002 and 2003???? The Guardian was all over the lies about the run-up to the Iraq War. They had it all. That paper was pretty much the only mainstream news outlet throughout that published the truth about what bush/cheney was up to. THEY had the voices and sources and quotes and interviews with people who brought up the OTHER side than what we were getting here in the US, being force-fed that drum-beat for war, with the "9-11," "9-11," "9-11" and "WMD!" "WMD!" WMD!" mantras being jammed up our asses every damn day. They actually covered the opposing view, thoroughly and richly, and gave it many a column inch. Continuing after 2003, too. The Guardian kept up the coverage throughout. It was the ONE place where you could reliably go to get to the bottom of what was going on, because the Guardian was talking to the people who were muzzled, ignored, frozen out, or demonized, and giving them full attention, exposure, and the legitimacy their views deserved.
There was almost none of that anywhere here - except for the low-profile and much-ignored McClatchy papers, the alternative press, and of course on sites like this one. None of the majors. Shit, people got fired for trying to report on coffins coming home from the Iraq War, or even take photos. It was years before one shot of multiple flag-draped coffins loaded inside some transport plane actually made it to print on a mass public scale. It was like the details of actual warfare were taboo and not to be spoken. Here and there you'd hear about some reporter getting sidelined or even fired for trying to cover the opposition to the war. Highest-profile case, I think - Phil Donahue was fired by MSNBC no less, because he was a lone voice against our invading Iraq, and oh gracious me, we certainly couldn't have that on the air now, could we?! Typical panels discussing Iraq on cable news would consist of a republi-CON representative or senator, a conservative columnist, a reporter or critic with a known conservative slant, and Donna Brazile: one of the most infuriating milquetoasts I'd ever screeched at when she was making yet another anemic "defense" of Democrats or conceding how wrong the Democratic/liberal/progressive take on things was. NO ONE paid any attention to what the Guardian was reporting, day after day, as it proved there was VERY much indeed another side to consider besides the non-stop war-cheerleading from every media .
But man, on this story, the Guardian is being referenced or quoted seemingly every minute on the minute. Almost as though somebody woke up somewhere in some back news office a couple of weeks ago and realized there was this news outlet in the UK called the Guardian that was reporting all kinds of stuff worth noticing.