March 14, 2004
This cartoon captures an ethical ambiguity:

Leunig
Of course, you can have the mirror opposite. Someone who thinks that everything the Palestinian and Iraqi bombers do is ethically okay and everything that the Israeli's and US do is wrong.
We have a kind of closed group think here that has lost its connection to a critical public reason. The Press is a good example of this. It has been very critical of the claims made by the US, Uk and Australia to justify the war in Iraq--- after the end of the war. Prior to the war the press was notable for its negligence of its watchdog role.
Michael Massing in this piece in the Review section of the Australian Financial Review asks:
"Watching and reading all this, one is tempted to ask, where were you all before the war? Why didn't we learn more about these deceptions and concealments in the months when the administration was pressing its case for regime change - when, in short, it might have made a difference?
Some maintain that the many analysts who've spoken out since the end of the war were mute before it. But that's not true. Beginning in the middle of 2002, the US "intelligence community" was rent by bitter disputes over how Bush officials were using the data on Iraq. Many US journalists knew about this, yet few chose to write about it."
Massing's article is a thorough working through of why few journalists choose to write critically about the justifications for invading Iraq. Massing concludes:
"The contrast between the press's feistiness since the end of the war and its meekness before it highlights one of the most entrenched and disturbing features of American journalism: its pack mentality. Editors and reporters don't like to diverge too sharply from what everyone else is writing. When a president is popular and a consensus prevails, journalists shrink from challenging him. Even now, papers like the Times and the Post seem loath to give prominent play to stories that make the administration look too bad. Thus, stories about the increasing numbers of dead and wounded in Iraq - both US and Iraqi - are usually consigned to page 10 or 12, where they won't cause readers too much discomfort."
The pack mentality is very prevalent amongst the Australian media. Many are lapdogs. The closed horizon of the lapdogs is particularly noticeable in the reporting on the Palestinian/Israel conflict.
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All true, but the ultimate question remains unasked. If there is a pack mentality, why? If it didn't exist so starkly in the past, why not? If now they run one way, then turn on a coin and head in the opposite direction, then why?
Packs have leaders. There's an arse sniffing hierarchy. You can see the untersturmfuhrers around the winger blogs, the colonels in the columns and the admirals in the board room... all reporting to the First Lord, let's say Murdoch, who, as we know, threw his lot in with the warmongers with indecent haste and an amoral sort of glee.
If his minions are backtracking furiously, it's because he's turned the tiller himself.
I'm not gainsaying the pack, but I don't think we ought to look for reasons for their behaviour in group psychology. It's far simpler than that; they were weak, they were fearful, they were taking orders they refused to buck.
In even an imperfect world, these buggers should be publicly eating shit and wiping the omelettes off their faces. In stocks for us to throw ordure on their cowardly persons. But to read them you'd think they were right all along!
Why is this? Back to Murdoch and the unhealthy concentration of our media...