We are Distressed and Upset by THE DISTORTED MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE IRAQ WAR
For decades Americans were taught that we had a "free press." Now, we learn that when we need unbiased information most, the news media and some journalists have become handmaidens to the government. We are particularly concerned by television news' unwillingness to present to us what is really happening, but even the print media often gives us the messages that the Pentagon wants us to hear. * Every story is presented as though we were all cheer-leading for the war and wanting to know how clever "our" military is, how smart its bombs, how well thought out its strategy. This is not news but propaganda. * We are told little about the suffering of the Iraqi people (and even the suffering of American troops is down-played so as not to hurt our morale). It never occurs to the media that many of its readers have transcended narrow nationalist chauvinism--so that we care about the suffering of ALL people on this planet, not just of those whom we are officially supposed to care about. It's as if the media thinks that its task is to reelect George Bush by showing how wonderfully his strategy is doing-and anything to the contrary is seen as anti-American or "not supporting the troops." * Tell us the names and the life-stories of the people on BOTH SIDES who have been killed. * Tell us the stories and show us the footage of actual damage to civilians--information that is distributed in media all around the world except in the U.S. Stop listening to directives from the Administration about what is "appropriate" for us to know. Americans are able to make up our own minds--but not if you hide from us the terrible human costs of this war. Journalists made an important contribution to peace and justice by revealing the truths that the government didn't want us to know during the Vietnam war and Watergate. There are many decent people in the media--we want to encourage you to restore that tradition of courage by refusing to be used by the war-makers for their own political and military purposes. * Stop pretending that all we care about is ourselves. We are living at a moment when our common humanity is ready to burst forth and affirm the mutual interconnectedness of everyone on this planet--equally deserving of love and heartfelt concern. * Stop hiding our desire for something more than shallow versions of patriotism and cultural superiority. Give equal attention to the tens of millions of Americans whose spiritual and moral lives are not only about self-interest or about power over others. Frame your coverage of the war as though you are also speaking to millions of Americans who feel a genuine identification with the needs of others--and to a deep recognition that our own security and well-being depends on the security and well-being of every other person on the planet. Let these voices be heard! And let them be part of the "we" that you are talking to when you pick commentators and analysts. * Instead of packing the t.v. coverage with retired army generals, and the newspapers with the "normal range" of center to right columnists, lets hear some serious discourse from anti-war thinkers, from candidates for the Democratic nomination for President who oppose the war (like Congressman Dennis Kucinich) who have largely been blocked out of serious media coverage, plus some of America's religious leaders and internationally recognized moral leaders like Walter Brueggemann, Susan Sontag, Desmund Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Mary Robinson, Vaclav Havel, the Dalai Lama.Vaclav Havel, for example, supports the war--it's not that we are demanding only people who agree with us, but a different level of analysis that recognizes moral complexity and ambiguity. * We know that mostly these distortions are the result the self-censorship of the media itself--their sense that nothing is "serious" unless is is within the consensus as defined by the powerful. This "Cynical Realism" which is the knee-jerk "common sense" of media people has become even more hurtful in times of war when we care so much about finding a path to peace. Yet we also know that there are many very principled people in the media who privately share these concerns, but have not been able to influence the decision makers. We encourage them to stand up publicily to raise these issues--and you will find a large public ready to stand behind you against those who have turned journalism into cheer-leading for the war. We invite our fellow citizens to join us in this protest of the way the media is functioning. Here is what we are doing: The Media Critique and "Rapid Response Team". Every day we have hundreds of ordinary citizens monitoring the distortions and calling media to insist on fairer coverage. There are many decent people who are journalists or who work in the media, and many of them don't even recognize the ways that they are being used as cheerleaders of the status quo. The conversations we have with them each day, through letters and telephone calls, can make a difference-despite the many forces that push the ordinary journalist to rally round the flag and internalize the norms of the current social order ("there is no alternative" proclaims Thomas Friedman and the journalistic establishment), the weak link in the system is the decency of many people who work within it. Help us reach out to them. Many of our fellow citizens have never been exposed to a coherent alternative perspective to the Bush-ites and their co-dependent fellow travelers in the leadership of the Democratic Party. Some segments of the anti-war movement, meanwhile, have failed to articulate a perspective that is adequately nuanced and have at times been unwilling to acknowledge how humanly destructive the regime of Saddam Hussein has been--and the rallies dominated by knee-jerk anti-American rhetoric and simplistic slogans have not served to convince those who get their information from the dominant American media. The vast majority of demonstrators are more sophisticated--and need a way to reach others with their more nuanced message. So we are organizing at the grass roots level --house parties, educational events, and e-mail campaigns. You can help us organize some of this. And you can help us find ways to get the e-mails and addresses of people you know who would benefit from hearing an alternative perspective. We will send them analyses and news reports that are shut out by the media. Help us create public ceremonies of mourning and grieving for the losses on both sides. Or invite people into your own home to do this. Afterwards, allow people to share their ideas, their feelings of grief, righteous indignation, confusion, ambivalence, fear .....and hope. We can help you with ideas on how to organize this. Help us challenge the destructive ideas that led people to think that war was the "realistic" way to build safety and peace. Come to: A Teach-In to Congress June 1-4, Washington D.C. Mass media covers demonstrations by telling how many people were there-and if there is anything they consider "sexy" like acts of violence they'll cover that too. What they never cover is the CONTENT of what we are saying. So, we are going to bring an event to the center of American media and power-and focus not on demonstrating, but on providing different ideas-including a focus on how security for the U.S, Israel and Palestine can be achieved only when we reject the militaristic strategies that led Bush to the Iraq war and Ariel Sharon and Yassir Arafat to their continuing dance of death. We are, incidentally, both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine, and want the media to stop dichotomizing and give space to the voice of those who know that neither Israel nor Palestine can achieve safety and security unless the other side also gets a life of dignity, security and well-being. It's these voices that are usually ignored by the media's insistence on fitting everyone into pre-digested simplistic packages. At the Teach-In to Congress we will challenge the ideologies that lead to thinking that the lives of others are less important than those in our own group-whether that be ideologies of Christian, Jewish and Islamic fundamentalisms, or whether it be the pervasive nationalistic assumptions that shape discourse in the media. You may have come to D.C. to demonstrate-- this time come to talk to the people with power --and to shape a new public conversation. If you can't come to D.C., but support this kind of thinking, help us reprint this ad in other media around the U.S.--and to buy t.v. ads to challenge the distortions. And join the Tikkun Community--we need your involvement and support. The TIKKUN COMMUNITY is a multi-ethnic, interfaith organization of people committed to building a world of kindness, generosity, and love. We know that involves a transformation of American economic and political institutions. But it first involves a transformation of the heart-a willingness to transcend the cynical realism that dominates public discourse and to affirm our highest visions for a world of peace, justice and ecological sanity. Most people on this planet hunger for a more loving and caring world in which each of us is recognized as fundamentally valuable. Yet most of us are scared to even acknowledge to ourselves that we still want that world-- fearful that we will just be setting ourselves up for disappointment or disillusionment. The Tikkun Community is an organization trying to create the safety and confidence for people to go for their highest ideals. Your joining us will give others the understanding that they are not alone. Among the 100 signers so far: Rabbi Michael Lerner, Susannah Heschel, Peter Gabel, Rev. Rick Lowery, Rabbi Gerry Serota, Henry Giroux, Svi Shapiro, David Abram (author, The Spell of the Sensuous), Howard Winant (Professor, U.C. Santa Barbara), Mark Levine (Professor, UC Irvine), and at least a hundred others who've already sent us their names and contributions--so yes, looks like this is really possible if you send us your help).

We are Distressed and Upset by

THE DISTORTED MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE IRAQ WAR

For decades Americans were taught that we had a "free press." Now, we learn that when we need unbiased information most, the news media and some journalists have become handmaidens to the government. We are particularly concerned by television news' unwillingness to present to us what is really happening, but even the print media often gives us the messages that the Pentagon wants us to hear.

* Every story is presented as though we were all cheer-leading for the war and wanting to know how clever "our" military is, how smart its bombs, how well thought out its strategy. This is not news but propaganda.

* We are told little about the suffering of the Iraqi people (and even the suffering of American troops is down-played so as not to hurt our morale). It never occurs to the media that many of its readers have transcended narrow nationalist chauvinism--so that we care about the suffering of ALL people on this planet, not just of those whom we are officially supposed to care about. It's as if the media thinks that its task is to reelect George Bush by showing how wonderfully his strategy is doing-and anything to the contrary is seen as anti-American or "not supporting the troops."

* Tell us the names and the life-stories of the people on BOTH SIDES who have been killed.

* Tell us the stories and show us the footage of actual damage to civilians--information that is distributed in media all around the world except in the U.S. Stop listening to directives from the Administration about what is "appropriate" for us to know. Americans are able to make up our own minds--but not if you hide from us the terrible human costs of this war. Journalists made an important contribution to peace and justice by revealing the truths that the government didn't want us to know during the Vietnam war and Watergate. There are many decent people in the media--we want to encourage you to restore that tradition of courage by refusing to be used by the war-makers for their own political and military purposes.

* Stop pretending that all we care about is ourselves. We are living at a moment when our common humanity is ready to burst forth and affirm the mutual interconnectedness of everyone on this planet--equally deserving of love and heartfelt concern.

* Stop hiding our desire for something more than shallow versions of patriotism and cultural superiority. Give equal attention to the tens of millions of Americans whose spiritual and moral lives are not only about self-interest or about power over others. Frame your coverage of the war as though you are also speaking to millions of Americans who feel a genuine identification with the needs of others--and to a deep recognition that our own security and well-being depends on the security and well-being of every other person on the planet. Let these voices be heard! And let them be part of the "we" that you are talking to when you pick commentators and analysts.

* Instead of packing the t.v. coverage with retired army generals, and the newspapers with the "normal range" of center to right columnists, lets hear some serious discourse from anti-war thinkers, from candidates for the Democratic nomination for President who oppose the war (like Congressman Dennis Kucinich) who have largely been blocked out of serious media coverage, plus some of America's religious leaders and internationally recognized moral leaders like Walter Brueggemann, Susan Sontag, Desmund Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Mary Robinson, Vaclav Havel, the Dalai Lama.Vaclav Havel, for example, supports the war--it's not that we are demanding only people who agree with us, but a different level of analysis that recognizes moral complexity and ambiguity.

* We know that mostly these distortions are the result the self-censorship of the media itself--their sense that nothing is "serious" unless is is within the consensus as defined by the powerful. This "Cynical Realism" which is the knee-jerk "common sense" of media people has become even more hurtful in times of war when we care so much about finding a path to peace. Yet we also know that there are many very principled people in the media who privately share these concerns, but have not been able to influence the decision makers. We encourage them to stand up publicily to raise these issues--and you will find a large public ready to stand behind you against those who have turned journalism into cheer-leading for the war.

We invite our fellow citizens to join us in this protest of the way the media is functioning. Here is what we are doing:

*The Media Critique and "Rapid Response Team". Every day we have hundreds of ordinary citizens monitoring the distortions and calling media to insist on fairer coverage.

There are many decent people who are journalists or who work in the media, and many of them don't even recognize the ways that they are being used as cheerleaders of the status quo. The conversations we have with them each day, through letters and telephone calls, can make a difference-despite the many forces that push the ordinary journalist to rally round the flag and internalize the norms of the current social order ("there is no alternative" proclaims Thomas Friedman and the journalistic establishment), the weak link in the system is the decency of many people who work within it. Help us reach out to them.

*Many of our fellow citizens have never been exposed to a coherent alternative perspective to the Bush-ites and their co-dependent fellow travelers in the leadership of the Democratic Party. Some segments of the anti-war movement, meanwhile, have failed to articulate a perspective that is adequately nuanced and have at times been unwilling to acknowledge how humanly destructive the regime of Saddam Hussein has been--and the rallies dominated by knee-jerk anti-American rhetoric and simplistic slogans have not served to convince those who get their information from the dominant American media. The vast majority of demonstrators are more sophisticated--and need a way to reach others with their more nuanced message. So we are organizing at the grass roots level --house parties, educational events, and e-mail campaigns. You can help us organize some of this. And you can help us find ways to get the e-mails and addresses of people you know who would benefit from hearing an alternative perspective. We will send them analyses and news reports that are shut out by the media.

*Help us create public ceremonies of mourning and grieving for the losses on both sides. Or invite people into your own home to do this. Afterwards, allow people to share their ideas, their feelings of grief, righteous indignation, confusion, ambivalence, fear .....and hope. We can help you with ideas on how to organize this.

*Help us challenge the destructive ideas that led people to think that war was the "realistic" way to build safety and peace. Come to: A Teach-In to Congress June 1-4, Washington D.C. Mass media covers demonstrations by telling how many people were there-and if there is anything they consider "sexy" like acts of violence they'll cover that too. What they never cover is the CONTENT of what we are saying. So, we are going to bring an event to the center of American media and power-and focus not on demonstrating, but on providing different ideas-including a focus on how security for the U.S, Israel and Palestine can be achieved only when we reject the militaristic strategies that led Bush to the Iraq war and Ariel Sharon and Yassir Arafat to their continuing dance of death. We are, incidentally, both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine, and want the media to stop dichotomizing and give space to the voice of those who know that neither Israel nor Palestine can achieve safety and security unless the other side also gets a life of dignity, security and well-being. It's these voices that are usually ignored by the media's insistence on fitting everyone into pre-digested simplistic packages.

At the Teach-In to Congress we will challenge the ideologies that lead to thinking that the lives of others are less important than those in our own group-whether that be ideologies of Christian, Jewish and Islamic fundamentalisms, or whether it be the pervasive nationalistic assumptions that shape discourse in the media. You may have come to D.C. to demonstrate-- this time come to talk to the people with power --and to shape a new public conversation. If you can't come to D.C., but support this kind of thinking, help us reprint this ad in other media around the U.S.--and to buy t.v. ads to challenge the distortions. And join the Tikkun Community--we need your involvement and support.

The TIKKUN COMMUNITY is a multi-ethnic, interfaith organization of people committed to building a world of kindness, generosity, and love. We know that involves a transformation of American economic and political institutions. But it first involves a transformation of the heart-a willingness to transcend the cynical realism that dominates public discourse and to affirm our highest visions for a world of peace, justice and ecological sanity. Most people on this planet hunger for a more loving and caring world in which each of us is recognized as fundamentally valuable. Yet most of us are scared to even acknowledge to ourselves that we still want that world-- fearful that we will just be setting ourselves up for disappointment or disillusionment. The Tikkun Community is an organization trying to create the safety and confidence for people to go for their highest ideals. Your joining us will give others the understanding that they are not alone.

Among the 100 signers so far: Rabbi Michael Lerner, Susannah Heschel, Peter Gabel, Rev. Rick Lowery, Rabbi Gerry Serota, Henry Giroux, Svi Shapiro, David Abram (author, The Spell of the Sensuous), Howard Winant (Professor, U.C. Santa Barbara), Mark Levine (Professor, UC Irvine), and at least a hundred others who've already sent us their names and contributions--so yes, looks like this is really possible if you send us your help).