The truth about most modern journalism: You first become a career media worker, you start climbing the ladder, and then you prostitute yourself. It's as common as it's straightforward.
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For what the public did not know was that in order to be professional, journalists had to ensure that news and opinion were dominated by official sources, and that has not changed. Go through the New York Times on any day, and check the sources of the main political stories-domestic and foreign-you'll find they're dominated by government and other established interests. That is the essence of professional journalism. I am not suggesting that independent journalism was or is excluded, but it is more likely to be an honorable exception. Think of the role Judith Miller played in the New York Times in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Yes, her work became a scandal, but only after it played a powerful role in promoting an invasion based on lies. Yet, Miller's parroting of official sources and vested interests was not all that different from the work of many famous Times reporters, such as the celebrated W.H. Lawrence, who helped cover up the true effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August, 1945. "No Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin," was the headline on his report, and it was false.
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So, a pattern was set. Impartiality was a principle certainly: a principle to be suspended whenever the establishment was under threat. And that principle has been upheld ever since.

Take the invasion of Iraq. There are two studies of the BBC's reporting. One shows that the BBC gave just 2 percent of its coverage of Iraq to antiwar dissent-2 percent. That is less than the antiwar coverage of ABC, NBC, and CBS. A second study by the University of Wales shows that in the buildup to the invasion, 90 percent of the BBC's references to weapons of mass destruction suggested that Saddam Hussein actually possessed them, and that by clear implication Bush and Blair were right. We now know that the BBC and other British media were used by the British secret intelligence service MI-6. In what they called Operation Mass Appeal, MI-6 agents planted stories about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, such as weapons hidden in his palaces and in secret underground bunkers. All of these stories were fake. But that's not the point. The point is that the work of MI-6 was unnecessary, because professional journalism on its own would have produced the same result.

Coordinated fuel truck suicide bombing.

400 dead and counting in what appears to be a genocidal attack.

Hundreds of orphaned children.

Second worst terrorist attack in modern history, after 9/11.

US doesn't have a clue as to who actually did it.

[The next time you hear confident assurances from the White House and its supporters that the "surge" of U.S. troops in Iraq is working and that something called "victory" is now within sight, remember the Yazidis.

If it takes a Middle East expert to explain to you why it is working, it's not working. . . .

If it takes a Doctor to explain to you why the drug is working, it's not working...

If it takes an engineer to explain why you can see a picture on the TV screen, you are not seeing it..

What response there has been has been careful and respectful. RW military blog BLACKFIVE, for example, says their experiences are no doubt true, but that basically it's above their pay grade to understand it all. Oh, and that BTW it's all Iran's fault.

Some fascinating nuggets of RW thought appear in that BLACKFIVE piece:

• So much for the idea the WH pushes that the Surge is supposed to open a space for political solutions to occur:

  A political solution cannot preceed the military solution.  Political solutions only arise when the losing party no longer feels that it can benefit more by continuing the struggle.  In other words, you have to win the war first.

• That continuing the war is a punishment and ending it is a reward that should help coerce Iraqis into doing what we think they should be doing politically:

  The political process should be understood as following rather than leading the warfighting process.  It is critical to make clear to the people of Iraq that the enemies of an independent Iraqi government cannot hope to establish peace, but can only prolong the war

• The failure to provide power, water and other civilian infrastructure in the face of insurgent attacks are proof that we are right to be trying to bring "civilization" to the benighted inhabitants of Iraq:

  I think their brutality ought to be motivating to a certain degree.  We ought not to want to say, "America and her allies can be defeated if you are prepared to be cruel enough to the weak."  I would add to your list of things we wish to accomplish a second humanitarian goal, one that applies not only to Iraq but to many places in the world:  we, the Coalition countries, need to make a stand for civilization.

I wonder how long it'll be before their editors start slandering these guys and calling for their heads.

Some excerpts,

[As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. ]

[The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework.]

[A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families. ]

[In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear.]

[Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful.]

[Washington's insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made - de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government - places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.]

[In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are - an army of occupation - and force our withdrawal.]

Dog Paddling in the Tigris
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: July 1, 2007

There is no sign that the U.S. military's surge in Iraq is making Iraqi politics or security better in any appreciable way.

Set a Date and Buy Some Leverage
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: December 8, 2006

The brutally honest Baker-Hamilton assessment of the Iraq morass implies that we need to leave Iraq if the factions there don't get their act together, but it also urges a last-ditch effort to enlist the help of Syria and Iran to salvage something decent. Both are good suggestions, but they will only have a chance of being effective if we go one notch further and set a fixed date -- now -- for America to leave Iraq. ...

Wikipedia also points to "his August 4, 2006 column ...the effort to transform Iraq by military invasion had failed, and that it was time for the United States to admit failure and disengage."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Friedman