As Greenwald points out, who could argue with that? It's the same logic Bush used from Day One: We're fighting terrorism and you're either with us or against us.
Again, this is not to say that governments or the media they control (or fail to control) are wrong to do what they are doing. They are not wrong. Society is divided into many various interest groups and it will be quite unreasonable to ask governments or the media to represent your interests ahead of the interests of other people all the time, not to say that it is impossible of accomplishment.
It's especially tough to ask much from the media, whose working classes (journalists) are getting paid to say what the employer wants be said or get lost. Asked to give a toast before the New York Press Club in 1880, John Swinton, formerly Chief of Staff at the New York Times, put it bluntly:
There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job.
If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press. We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.
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