Opinion | US media must lay groundwork for peace offensive on Korean peninsula
- The American media was wrong on the Iraq war, and today continues to perpetuate wishful thinking on the Korean peninsula and the US military
- With sanctions on North Korea and shows of military might being largely ineffective, it’s time for a reboot of US policy and a more nuanced media narrative
A media system can filter your world-view not unlike the narrowest religion claiming to know what’s best about everything. Truly professional media platforms, especially if print-based, will aim to do right by you. By contrast, the powerful media institutions or systems that have the effect of shielding you from reality are an enemy. Their errors can cause serious damage. We’re not talking about miscues in the crossword puzzle but life-and-death stuff – nuclear war versus peace, for example.
For decades, I was a full-time card-carrying member of the US news media. This was a period of my life that today would have to be labelled as my professional youth. Then, in the mid-90s, I began writing columns on Asia, while teaching media and politics at university.
Next week will see the start at Loyola Marymount University of my semester-long Introduction to the Media and Politics of Asia. This is my trademark course, birthed a quarter of a century ago at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). At that time, it was the only course devoted to the political news media of Asia in the University of California higher education system.
A major theme of this course is that all media systems, in one way or the other, nurture political bias – some far more than others. This unhappy generalisation applies to the US media, of course, as well as others. This is not new: what is new is that on the major current issues of war and peace, the US media’s overall performance may be more deficient than ever.
One notorious recent example was the near-unanimous American media endorsement of the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Recall that this unbelievable blunder was launched without UN Security Council authorisation and opposed by some of our savvier European allies. This rally-around-the-president moment was a disgrace.
The subsequent American media soul-searching was commendable, but in the end may well prove more bromidic and narcissistic than ameliorative. No, our world is not best reported in stark black and white. Yes, there may be some good even in the “bad guys” and some bad in the “good guys”.
