20 Years After Iraq Invasion, Will Media’s Complicity Be Flushed Down Memory Hole?

As mainstream U.S. media outlets pause to remember the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it’s clear that there’s a lot they hope we’ll forget – first and foremost, the media’s own active complicity in whipping up public support for the war.But the more you dig into mainstream news coverage from that period, as our documentary team did last week when we put together a five-minute montage from our 2007 film War Made Easy, the harder it is to forget how flagrantly broadcast and cable news networks across the political landscape uncritically spread the Bush administration’s propaganda and actively excluded dissenting voices.The numbers don’t lie. A 2003 report by the media watchdog Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) found that in the two weeks leading up to the invasion, ABC World News, NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, and the PBS Newshour featured a total of 267 American experts, analysts, and commentators on camera to supposedly help make sense of the march to war. Of these 267 guests, an astounding 75 percent were current or former government or military officials, and a grand total of one expressed any skepticism.Meanwhile, in the fast-growing world of cable news, Fox News’s tough-talking, pro-war jingoism was...