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Tom Segel's blog

Where Are the Media Heroes?

By Tom Segel | August 27, 2005 | 12:28

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Harlingen, Texas, August 24, 2005: It really doesn’t matter what news service or publication you pick up. The drone of defeatism moans on and on. In this case it was CNN.com on August 18, 2005. - At Least 43 Killed, 88 Wounded in ‘Coordinated Attacks’ reads the headline. The article reports on a string of car bombings in central Baghdad. “The blasts came as transitional government officials worked to complete the new constitution.”

A paragraph later the story continues, “A car bomb exploded outside the al-Nahda bus terminal. A second car bomb exploded 10 minutes later.” But, we can almost recite the news article without seeing it in print. Like the majority of filings from Iraq, this was more bombs and bodies, created from information picked up at the daily news briefing.

Why Did The Media Lose 'Why'?

By Tom Segel | August 24, 2005 | 16:18

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Harlingen, Texas August 24, 2005: The saga of Cindy Sheehan continues with online postings and traditional outlets of both print and electronic media chanting an unending anti-war mantra.

The web page publication Yahoo News, on August 21, 2005, ran a banner headline reading “Cindy Sheehan Stirs Up Long Overdue Anti-War Movement”. The text of the article reads “She is no glamour girl, and yet she has a throng of admirers who have been nursing inside themselves, for the last two years and more, the secrets she implicitly reveals.”

The article identifies her as “The Gold Star Mother of the Iraq War” and later in the text charges …”Cindy Sheehan’s lightning effect on the country is that she has been saying – with her actions, gestures and intonations, if not exactly in words – what has been left deliberately unsaid in America until now…That the war in Iraq is useless.”

Are The Media Poisoning American Resolve?

By Tom Segel | August 18, 2005 | 17:59

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The majority of Americans charge the Bush Administration is not prosecuting the war effectively. The mainstream media, however, use this polling information to advance anti-Bush, anti-war positions.

An example of this can be seen in an August 14 Knight Ridder article. Under a headline reading “Majority of public opposes Iraq war” is a lengthy article generally summarized in one paragraph which reads, “New polls report that for the first time a majority of Americans reject President Bush’s contention that the war over there is making us safer over here. Indeed, baring major immediate progress in Iraq, 2005 may well be remembered as the year when public opinion went south and never came back…”

Though thinking people realize polls only reflect how people feel about specific questions at that brief moment in time, they are rarely reported as such. This is but one of the several ways our media present opinion as fact. When generalized polls are reported as hard news, when bombs and body counts are the lead stories on radio and television news shows, when a small band of war protesters are presented as “growing” sentiment against the conflict in Iraq, the poisoning of American resolve must be the intended outcome.