I am astonished that mine is the first comment. I would expect more from AlterNet readers than to ignore a program about the selling of the war on Iraq.

Meanwhile, here's a NYT headline from today:

"a senior Al-Qaeda commander" was apparently arrested, a man who had plotted against Musharaff and caused violence in Afghanistan, said to be a top member of al-qaeda and associate of Bin Laden. Last time I heard anything official, Pakistan was hiding Bin Laden, so why would he conceivably plot against his friend?

These media people are not learning. They are repeating the same lies over and over, just as they are told to do by official Washington, DC. How many upper-echelon friends of Bin Laden have been arrested or killed so far?

Anyone paying attention would know that there weren't that many members in the organization to begin with or that many friends of Bin Laden (who is probably long-since dead and for whom the U.S. is not looking). But the same old lies continue.

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I'm here! I sure hope that people care about this. I am troubled at how threatening the objective opinion of a journalist has become.

I'm sure that Fox is trying to smear Moyers as a extremist or something. Those that jumped on the war bandwagon are the ones that are pushing the limits of the political spectrum.

It's like the Bush Admin. told the idiot press people that they could magically give them a role in a real life John Wayne style war movie. Glory, honor, and no need to worry about pesky reality.

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Bill Moyers on Iraq - Democracy Now!

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I guess the thing that is hardest for me is how old this story is and how long it has taken (and is taking) to tell. This is not news, anyone that has been following this has been aware of this story for quite some time (the Rome session of the world tribunal on Iraq in 2005 was set up to document media collusion with the bush admin).

I am not being critical, just frustrated. The part in moyers first chapter in which he 'reveals' that the media "got out of the way" of the war mongering admin. is false. well not false, but just a half truth.
As peter Klein revealed in 2004 in an interview I shot, the media went along with the admin knowingly. why? because it made for good viewing... the part of the story that is not being told is what the Iraq war did for the press and TV in general, rather than the other way around. Before 9-11, TV was dead. people didn't watch the olympics, were sick of reality TV (which of course, was already a desperate reaction to falling viewership), and advertisers were beginniong to lose faith in the medium...

9-11 and the war was a carrot that the media (and their corporate bosses) understood held the power to revive a dying medium, and this more than anything was the reason why they not only went along with the show, but helped with all their years of TV saavy, develop a palatable TV viewing experience, which of course is what is was (and is)...
The media corps no longer need BUSH and his show, the audience has grown tired and even annoyed at find out they were enticed with a cheap trick, and now the media looks to distance itself as the house falls (and will probably now move on to global warming)...

Before Moyers gets too cosy with Bob Simon at CBS 60 minutes, just remember that it was 60 mins that supressed the Abu Graib story at the behest of the Pentagon (there was an actual request by the pentagon to supress the story, which CBS complied with), and remember that Simon and Klien (his producer at 60 mins), have created alot of myth about Iraq themselves (comparing al sadr to jim jones, and saying he believes he is the hidden imam, both of which are total crap)...

I have been trying to make this film for 3 years now (imagine how hard it is to find production funds), I have interviews with Dahr Jamail, Barbara Olshansky, Peter Klein, Rana Al-Aiouby, Nermin Al Mufti, Phil Shiner, Dr Azawi, Fadil Badril, etc etc etc...
commitments of interviews from Oliviero Toscani, Bernardo Attias (baudrillard expert), Lauren Moret, etc etc etc...
we have filmed in Istanbul, Iraq, London, NY, Washington, San Francisco, Rome, etc etc etc..., but no media outlet dares touch this story as it damns the media much more than moyers...

project is on the verge of collapse, if there is anyone out there who thinks they can help:

andrew stromotich
puuumo@yahoo.com

thanks...

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the Elephant in the Room during his whole piece - the influence of AIPAC and radical Zionists in pushing the march to war through sympathetic jews in the press (Judith Miller, Krauthammer, etc.).

It was ridiculous to see Moyers struggling to make sense of why the press would be so complicit when he and his viewers know damn right well that an agenda was being served to promote the war to aid Israel by weakening its enemys in the region.

It’s a sad day indeed when even Bill Moyers dare not mention the elephant in the room that is driving U.S. policy and press.

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The documentary shows how utterly stupid, lazy and compliant most of the mainstream American media is when it comes to covering issues it obviously wants to promote. The only people who came out of that documentary with a shred of dignity were Dan Rather and Bob Simon, who openly admitted their and the media's errors in how the march to the Iraq war was covered.

Tim Russert, especially, looked like the stupid pro-neo-con fool that he is. My husband and I laughed so hard when he said the critics of the war didn't "call him." Where the hell did he get his journalism skills from... Dollar Tree. No wait, that's an insult to Dollar Tree. The man needs to take Journalism 101 or maybe I should say 100, since he has obviously flunked some of the basic rules of journalism:

1. Does your story present both or more than one side of an issue?
2. YOU the journalist have ON YOUR OWN to find sources for your information. You don't expect the information to be presented to you on a silver platter. If that's your standard of journalism, get the hell out of the business. You've failed as a journalist and you've failed to do your job of conveying in an accurate way, critical information to your audience.

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