Demosophia

Frontline: Truth, War & Consequences

I had thought this PBS documentary would at least begin to settle some important factual issues about the war in Iraq and its aftermath, but it appears to be just a sort of rehash of the standard anti-war left talking points, right down to the uncorrected claim that the Bush case rested entirely on the notion of an "imminent threat." And just as this claim has become a counterfactual "truth" unrelated to the actual facts, this documentary doesn't pay more than brief passing attention to what's actually happening in Iraq, according to the experience of most Iraqis. It's more the "history of the media's war against the war" than any honest or balanced attempt to set the record straight.

Although I spent some of the time switching channels to watch the Yankees outplay the Red Sox, as far as I could tell Frontline's:Truth, War and Consequences managed to neglect any reference to any positive developments or successful reconstruction strategies. Nor did it mention that the casualty rate for Americans is declining, and that at the current rate it would take something like 500 years to reach the number of combat deaths we had in Vietnam. The use of the word "truth" in the title was therefore basically a vanity for a description that managed to reduce an enormous amount of successful effort into a few pools of blood and some riot scenes. If this is journalism, indeed what passes for the "best" journalism, I think we need less of it. And I'm going to oppose continued public funding of PBS. It appears that the notion of an American BBC has about run its course. If I wanted to fund what Andrew Sullivan has called "a wilful and petty disinformation campaign," I could always contribute to Pacifica Radio, which is what PBS really aspires to become anyway.