Jamison Foser: The military-media-industrial complex

[babylonsister]

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200904100031

The military-media-industrial complex

by Jamison Foser


Given the news media's obsession with the federal budget deficit, it is a little strange that they freak out so quickly whenever anyone raises the possibility of higher taxes or lower defense spending. But what is really strange is that they can't stop worrying about tax hikes and defense cuts even when faced with proposals to cut taxes for most Americans and to increase defense spending.

Last month, we saw the media rush to portray President Obama's tax proposals as tax increases, even though the proposals would cut taxes for the vast majority of Americans. The media's focus on the higher taxes that people making more than $200,000 a year would pay was absurd, but it wasn't new: The elite media have long behaved as though the only part of tax policy that matters is the part that affects the wealthy.

This week, the media brought a similar lack of perspective to their coverage of the defense budget proposed by the Obama administration. The plan, outlined by Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Tuesday, would increase defense spending from $513 billion to $534 billion.

I better go ahead and repeat that, because it probably isn't something you've heard much this week: The proposed budget would increase defense spending from $513 billion to $534 billion.

And yet, just about everywhere you turned this week, news reports suggested that the Obama administration proposed a drastic reduction in defense spending -- cuts so severe, the Army would soon consist of a small band of volunteers using slingshots and sharpened sticks to keep us safe.

snip//

It's tempting to chalk up the media's treatment of the defense budget "cuts" and the "tax increases" to sloppiness, innumeracy, and an inability to see the forest for the trees. But it's hard not to notice that in both cases, the flawed reporting benefits the wealthy and powerful who make up the Establishment.

Maybe that shouldn't be surprising. Big name reporters like Charlie Gibson and Wolf Blitzer would see their taxes go up under Obama's tax plan, which may explain why they act like everyone else's would, too. Meanwhile, the "military-industrial complex" Woodward mentioned owns the very cable channel on which he made his comments, and the media tends to rely on military "analysts" who are really defense contractors.

[ms liberty]

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