Tony Blair's sour grapes attack on the British press is interesting for it lack of perspective. Certainly his criticism of lack objectivity and confusion between commentary and factual reporting has been made before to general agreement. But he totally ignores the use of the press by governments for public relation purposes. In an era of embedded reporters, selective leaks, and special relationships between reporters and their subjects its a foregone conclusion that the media is no longer objective or disinterested. It has become a tool of policy making.
Its rather redundant at this point to say the Iraq war was sold to Congress and the American people with little consideration for the truth of the accusations against the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. But Jeffery St. Clair at Counterpunch tells us some of the nitty gritty details of who was involved and how it was done. In his article Marketing an Invasion he identifies key Madison Avenue players hired to brand the war. Charlotte Beers was hired by Collin Powell as an undersecretary of state. Her claim to diplomatic expertise was two boffo ad campaigns for Uncle Ben's rice and Head & Shoulders dandruff shampoo. At the Pentagon, Rumsfeld hired Victoria Clarke as his director of public affairs. She had previously headed the D.C. office of the advertising firm Hill and Knowlton. She brought together PR experts and political fixers like Sheila Tate, Rich Galen, and Tommy Boggs on an advisory team referred to as the "Rumsfeld Group". This group gave the Pentagon "messaging advice". They advised that the Pentagon needed a fixed, identifiable enemy like a nation state in order to convince Americans the war was necessary and winnable. Since 50% of the gullible public still believes that Saddam was connected to the mainland terror attacks, the Regime's domestic PR campaign is one of the few parts of the war effort that worked. But the campaign, regardless of how sophisticated, would not have been effective without a complaint fourth estate. Read the article for more.