Jeanne d’Arc has a good roundup (from an anti-war perspective) of media criticism relating to the war.
She argues, based on the links she provides, that Americans are being shielded by their paternalistic media from seeing footage concerning both civilian casualties and our own losses. (She doesn’t mention the strange spectacle of the very American media outlets who endlessly replayed the clip of the American soldier’s body being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu treating al-Jazeera as a pariah for showing film of some US POWs.)
I wish I were certain that the expulsion of Philip Smucker of the Christian Science Monitor had to do with indiscretion about operational details rather than competence and independence. Whether justified or not, it’s certainly a reminder to the “embeds” that their capacity to keep working is entirely at the mercy of the Pentagon.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
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