refusal to cede the high ground

I have been lied to all along! This page on Indymedia disproves the scenes of Iraqi freedom broadcast around the world! How alarming - that there would be US tanks in a public area shortly after defeating the enemy forces of a hostile regime and taking the major city! Why, clearly the masses of people tearing down the statue were coerced in some way. Perhaps the US Secret Mind Control Laser was used to force iraqis to symbolically demonstrate their damnation against the symbol of their oppression?

sarcasm off - look I am as heavily critical of the media as anyone else. But no matter how frustrated I get with the media's refusal to tackle topics from all sides, thats a LONG way from arguing that the media is actually complicit in propaganda. The mistake that extreme anti-war protestors are making is equating A. a state-run propaganda outlet (such as Iraqi Information Minister Sahad al Sahaf) which is directly controlled by the government, and . an independent but biased media outlet.

The UK and the US have two completely independent media traditions, but with absolutely opposite biases. This is extremely useful to a media skeptic like myself because it gives me data to triangulate from. But bias is NOT lying^[1]

To argue that the US media is equivalent to the Iraqi Information ministry (which is essentialy what you are arguing, if you claim that the photos on Indymedia somehow disprove the simple jubilation of Iraqis at being freed from Saddam's control) is as gross a mismatch as comparing Bush to Hitler or 9-11 to the Holocaust. To do so marginalizes the victims of the Holocaust, the evil of Hitler, and the craven propaganda of the Iraqi IM solely to score some minor political points against America's foreign policy, Republicans, or the US media respectively. This is fundamentally dishonest.

There ARE legitimate critiques of Bush, moral condemnations of America's foreign policy, and the bias of the American media to be made, mind you. But resorting to such moral equivalence tactics is tantamount to... propaganda.

UPDATE: The New York Times: biased, but independent.

^[1] By the way, all you NPR haters, this point was made exactly on NPR a few days ago. If you dismiss NPR as biased then you've just rejected the most objective media of them all. Which really shows YOUR bias.