Just as they did in the wake of 9/11, corporate media outlets—led by cable news networks—are spreading hysteria, fueling anti-immigrant sentiment, and beating the drum for war by providing “context-free coverage of terror,” as one analyst put it this week. 

The 24/7 coverage of Friday’s attacks in Paris and their aftermath, marked by speculation and sensationalism, is only helping the media conglomerates.

According to Deadline: “Fox News Channel and CNN both logged their biggest primetime crowds of the year, excluding presidential debates, when viewers tuned in to learn about the attacks in Paris on Friday that killed at least 129 people and injured hundreds more. The two cable news networks traded hourly wins in the news demo that night.”

But wall-to-wall “analysis”—bereft of actual facts or nuance—does little for the viewer, wrote Jim Naureckas of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) on Tuesday. And it’s part of a historical pattern that only perpetuates war and conflict.

“The outpouring of no-context, ahistorical sympathy after 9/11 helped pave the way for a violent reaction that killed in Iraq alone roughly 150 times as many people as died in Lower Manhattan that day—an opportunistic catastrophe that did more to mock than avenge those deaths,” Naureckas argued. 

Click Here: cheap INTERNATIONAL jersey

“There is no doubt the Republicans are getting ready to launch a full blown campaign of paranoid bloodlust which, if successful, would have devastating consequences.”
—Heather Digby Parton, Salon

Political analyst and media critic Heather Digby Parton, writing at Salon on Tuesday, agreed that the media has been complicit in pushing problematic foreign policy.

“It was well documented that during the run-up to the Iraq war there was tremendous pressure coming from the executive suite of the news networks to cheerlead for the administration,” she argued. “Those who resisted were marginalized and fired if they refused to go along. It’s unlikely that the word went forth on Saturday that reporters should get on a war footing and issue demands that the president use ‘the greatest military in the world’ to ‘take out these bastards.’ But they don’t have to say it explicitly do they? Everyone knows the drill.”

“There is no doubt the Republicans are getting ready to launch a full blown campaign of paranoid bloodlust which, if successful, would have devastating consequences,” Parton concluded. “The media were willing recruits in their cause fifteen years ago. Let’s hope they gather their wits about them before they take us down that dangerous road again.”

SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT