http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/031509.html WPost Is a Neocon Propaganda Sheet
By Robert Parry
March 15, 2009 (A Special Report)
For Americans who hear the name Washington Post and still think of “All the President’s Men” – brave journalists and editors facing down a corrupt President – today’s version of the newspaper would be a sad disappointment, a betrayal of a noble past.
Over the last three decades, the Post has evolved into a neoconservative propaganda sheet, especially its opinion section which fronted for George W. Bush’s false Iraq-WMD claims, led the long-term bashing of Iraq War critics, and defends whatever actions the Israeli government takes, including the recent war in Gaza and apparently its desire to preemptively bomb Iran.
Rather than a newspaper committed to the truth and favoring a broad debate about important issues, the Washington Post has become an enforcement mechanism for a neocon-dominated Establishment, setting the parameters for permissible points of view and twisting facts for that purpose.
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Looking back over the Post’s recent history, I’m also reminded of my experience at the Post-owned Newsweek magazine in the late 1980s. I had been hired because of my early work exposing what became known as the Iran-Contra Affair. Newsweek – like the Post – had bought into the earlier false denials of the Reagan administration.
I thought maybe Newsweek sincerely wanted to catch up on possibly the most important scandal story of the decade. But I soon encountered what I considered troubling neocon trends at the magazine, particularly an elitist view about the need to steer the public in a direction favored by the Establishment, rather than to trust in the people’s well-informed democratic judgment.
When I spoke once with Washington bureau chief Evan Thomas about what I considered the importance of giving unvarnished information to the American people so they could make up their own minds, he upbraided me with an admonition that at Newsweek our purpose was less to inform the readers than to guide them to the proper conclusions.
Over the ensuing two decades, that elitist attitude, a core feature of neoconservative ideology, appears to have spread throughout the Washington Post company. It influences the tone of the news pages
, but it pervades the editorial section.
Rather than encouraging as free and open debate as possible, the Post now sees its role as herding the American people to certain preordained conclusions – and casting out from acceptable society anyone who dares threaten the Washington consensus.