The American media is composed of highly-paid hacks who present an unbalanced view of the world, according to European journalists.



By James P. Tucker Jr.



American journalists are lap dogs of the chicken hawks who are bound and determined to invade Iraq, according to their European counterparts.

“Tim Russert would be one of the softest interviewers in Europe,” said Nick Bryant, BBC’s Washington correspondent and a panelist at a recent Washington forum to discuss the differences between coverage of Iraq in Europe and the United States.

“In Europe, interviewers are adversarial,” Bryant said. “Over here, they try to end an interview on good terms. That’s not the case in Europe.”

Vickie Walton-James of The Chicago Tribune countered that “we have been extremely tough on the Bush administration and aggressively challenged them.” But she admitted that the American media has been slow to cover anti-war sentiment.

Martin Wagner, a correspondent for German Public Radio, blamed the American media for failing to demonstrate that war is not inevitable.

“Germans and French are part of the solution, even though we have a difference of opinion.” Wagner said. American news organizations, he said, are guilty of contributing to “the mental build up to war.” He accused the U.S. press of failing to challenge the administration’s bellicose war stance.

“The American government walks its own line and says ‘you’re either with us or against us,’ leaving no room for compromise,” Wagner said.

In toadying to the war-mongers, the American press portrayed Secretary of State Colin Powell as more convincing than he was when he addressed the United Nations Security Council seeking another resolution supporting an invasion of Iraq, said Loick Berrou, Washington bureau chief for French TV channel TFI.

“People in Europe are simply not convinced that there is a link between al Qaeda and Iraq,” Berrou said. “We are concerned about where the U.S. is leading us.”

Bryant also criticized American news organizations for failing to report news outside the conventional wisdom.

“The Washington Post did not include the part of [Osama] bid Laden’s tape where he criticized Iraq,” Bryant said.

The fact that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq is a secular state where women walk the streets without veils and unescorted by males, attend schools and hold jobs, is greatly under-reported in the United States. To bin Laden, who oppressed women in all of these ways, Iraq is a nation of “infidels.”

With the exception of the newspaper you are now reading, the national media has left unchallenged the administration’s position that Saddam and bin Laden are sweethearts, collaborating in plans for more terrorist attacks on the United States.

Bryant also accused the U.S. media of failing to cover the human cost of war, saying that after the first Persian Gulf War Americans have become accustomed to military adventures with few casualties.

“All that gets reported here is how many cruise missiles get launched, not how many people die,” Bryant said.