GLOBE EDITORIAL
Bad news
December 2, 2005
THE BUSH administration undermines the democracy it purports to be building in Iraq when it trashes the principles of a free press. Reports in the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times on how the US government pays Iraqi journalists to write, and newspapers to publish, pro-American pieces without naming the source, expose an ethical breach stunning in its callous disregard for the truth.
Then again, maybe it shouldn't be so stunning, given that the Bush administration has disdained open journalistic inquiry since its earliest days and has used the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq war to claim national security as an excuse for secrecy and the foisting of propaganda on US citizens.
The bruising irony of these pathetic efforts, of course, is that Bush claims he is attempting to export democracy at the same time that his administration is corrupting the news, making a mockery of the free press that is a cornerstone of democracy. These are the tactics not of a free society but of tyrants such as the one Bush deposed in the name of freedom.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2005/12/02/bad_news/