Insidious Bias

THE GREEK press has its origins in the party system and continues to work hand in hand with it to produce overt media bias. Formative national experiences - the 1946-49 Civil War, the 1967-74 Junta and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus - have added a further, collective bias against virulent capitalism, military opportunism and globalisation. These biases stand in sharp contrast to the Anglo-Saxon tradition of balance.

Yet that tradition failed to challenge the Bush administration in March 2003 on the grounds then stipulated for the invasion of Iraq - that Saddam Hussein had the means and will to unleash weapons of mass destruction against the West through terrorist organisations.

US media commentator Norman Solomon says that subtle forms of bias prevented scrutiny. Editorial influence of a few outlets over others; corporate consolidation over advertising markets; the perception on the part of powerful editors that they do not want to bring down a presidency; the recourse of journalists to an acceptable pool of sources; and the habit of editors to stay within a consensus - all these factors, he says, blunted the will and ability of American journalists to challenge official government policy, and of viewers and readers to be open to reporting outside an unspoken canon.

Why were the American media not more keen to scrutinise the war rationale?

People talk about Fox News and it is a Rupert Murdoch-owned conduit for rightwing propaganda, but really the New York Times, an ostensibly liberal newspaper, will deserve more credit, if you will, for helping to drag the US into war. When they discovered that the WMD (weapons of mass destruction) story was a complete fantasy perpetuated by the Rove-Cheney-Bush administration, you had this belated mea culpa. They said, 'we fell for it. ' Well, they didn't fall for it, they jumped for it. There was an eagerness on the front page to make this case of WMD under Saddam Hussein's control. And also, why would the New York Times' top editors put themselves in the same category as the government? I thought that was very revealing. They view themselves as integral to the national security state and so their capacity and inclination to scrutinise what is coming out of the White House are very hobbled.

We had, a year after the November 2004 election, the New York Times break the story of the NSA (National Security Agency) spying on people in the US, including on US citizens. The New York Times had that story before the 2004 election, and sat on it, we are told, in part because the election was so imminent that they didn't want to seem partisan. It's like saying, 'we don't want to give the public timely information when that might make a difference, we'll wait until later. ' Which is reminiscent of what Napoleon said: It's not necessary to censor the news, it's sufficient to delay it until it no longer matters.

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