Another sad commentary on the US media

My search for embeddable news videos on the Iraq War hasn't been encouraging. I couldn't find any at the ABC News site, or at MSNBC, or even at the BBC site. At CBS, I found a clip of Jessica Simpson singing "God Bless America" in Kuwait that was embeddable, and even one embeddable video of under two minutes with actual news about the Iraq War!

But at Aljazeera's English video page on YouTube, I quickly found this video of 03/14/08. It's 11 1/2 minutes of a discussion on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the 2003 invasion of Iraq featuring a former Qatari Justice Minister, an Egyptian political scientists, an Iraqi nuclear scientists and a spokeswoman from the US Embassy in Iraq. Yes, an official US spokesperson. Judge for yourself whether the format is as professional as, say, Chris Matthews' TV appearances. (Okay, that's a very low bar, but still...)



You know, if Aljazeera can pull this off, why can't major American news organizations?


I suppose it seems Pollyannish to be surprised, much less disappointed. But sometimes I'm just kind of starry-eyed, I guess.

Here's Part 2 of that segment:



Check out what Imad Khaduri, the Iraqi nuclear scientist, says starting at about 0:55 in Part 2. Admittedly, I don't watch as much TV news as a lot of people. So maybe Evening News audiences are occasionally hearing such issues so bluntly put. But I can't recall hearing it on American TV news lately. Who knows, maybe this guy is a hard core Baathist. But since we're entering the sixth year of war in his country with no end in sight, isn't there some value in the American public hearing such questions discussed on TV? The Embassy spokeswoman doesn't do a very effective job of responding to his point, it seems to me.

Tags: aljazeera, establishment press, iraq war, mainstream media, mainstream press

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