I was listening to Noam Chomsky delivering the 5th Annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture: The Unipolar Moment and the Culture of Imperialism:

…which reminded me of this friendly defamation I ‘suffered’ at the hands of a senior correspondent at the Irish Times back in 2007, in a discussion on RTE’s Tonight with Vincent Browne show following the first in a series of lectures Chomsky gave at UCD. [starts at 37mins 40sec] Thankfully Harry Browne rode to this annoymous persons defense.

Tonight with Vincent Browne 17/01/07

[Interesting use of sound effects at 41mins 21sec]

The actual question that I asked was:

“To what extent is the corporate media; The Irish Times, The Guardian, The Irish Independent etc complicit in Iraq’s illegal war, as a result of their inaccurate portrayal of the case for war and the continuing conflict?”

And Chomsky’s response was:

“The US press, and I don’t think its different elsewhere. In fact the continent is often worse; German press, French press. The war in Iraq is described in the manner that some highschool newspaper would describe the local sports team. The framework of discussion is always ‘how well are we doing?’, ‘did the coach make a mistake?’, ‘should he have substituted another player?’, ‘can we do better next time?’

I have virtually never seen a departure from that framework in the Western press. It’s the way most totalitarian states describe their own atrocities. Within that framework you do get some criticism, but the framework itself is so totally distorted that you just can’t comment on it. And it’s true in case after case…The framework of discussion is so skewed, that even extremely good reporting, and it does exist, is within a framework that is imposing serious mis-impressions.” [MediaBite, A crime within a crime within a crime, 09/01/07]

The complete lecture “Democracy Promotion: Reflections on Intellectuals and the State” can be found here.